


Heat

by Deastar



Series: Heat [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 15:35:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1392979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deastar/pseuds/Deastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Bruce tries to think of a different angle; there are some facts they’re stuck with, but they may be able to change how their captors perceive those facts. After a moment, he suggests, “What if we make them think—not try to hide that you’re in heat, that’s the truth we could build on—but make them think… you’re in an omega’s heat?”</i><br/><i>He can see that Natasha immediately likes the idea, but she’s turning it over in her mind, poking at the weak spots, testing the sharp edges.</i><br/>Imprisoned together in a cave, Bruce and Natasha turn their higher thought processes to escape. But not all instincts are bad instincts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heat

**Author's Note:**

> This story took me a year and a half to write; all the gratitude in the world goes to laulan, who read a few early scenes and reassured me that people would actually want to read 10K words of Natasha/Bruce A/B/O porn (which later sprouted 15K words of plot), and then poured sweat and blood into several later drafts, keeping me honest. I couldn't have done it without her.
> 
> Warnings: Physical injury, credible and immediate threat of sexual assault, POV character with terrible self-esteem and self-hating thought patterns, intense physical violence and brief gory images, brief misogynistic language and attitudes, a/b/o or sex-pollen-type consent issues, brief non-consensual but non-sexual and non-violent touch. If, as you’re reading, you feel these warnings were inadequate, please let me know.

“Welcome to the world,” Bruce hears as his eyes open. He’s lying on his back, looking up at… rock, grey and rough; light is coming from somewhere in the direction of his feet, and he’s not alone. _“Welcome to the world,”_ he plays back – Natasha, he’s pretty sure.

“Natasha?”

“Good, they probably didn’t wipe your memory,” says Natasha’s disembodied voice. Bruce tries to prop himself up on his elbows to look for her, but when he does, his head swims and his vision blurs. Pain splits his head in two, bad enough that he can feel his grip on the reins starting to slip – there’s the too-big-for-his-skin feeling, there’s the buzzing rush of rage surging up through his veins. He can already feel the spasm rolling through him, hear his own voice deepen into a rumble as he groans.

He can hear, distantly, the panic in Natasha’s voice when she says, “Dr. Banner—Bruce—you really need to stay calm, lay back down, close your eyes—”

“That’s not—” he tries to tell her, losing his grasp on speech as he shudders and his teeth start to grow too big for his mouth, “it won’t—”

“I don’t want to alarm you—” _Too late_ , Bruce thinks. “—but you will _kill me_ if you don’t shut it down,” Natasha warns.

That knocks Bruce back enough to distract him from the pain, and he tries to follow her orders: he closes his eyes and tries to stay still.

He can hear her take a deep, shaking breath, so he knows the iron calm in her voice is a lie when she tells him, “You and I are locked underground in a very small cave – _very_ small – and the chance that you would accidentally crush me if you transformed right now is very high, even leaving aside what happened the last time the Hulk and I were in a dark place together.”

Bruce focuses on that thought, tries to exclude everything else: the pain, the fear, the constant dull ache of anger that greets him every time he wakes up and follows him down every time he falls asleep. He breathes; he listens for the sound of Natasha’s breathing; tries to sync them together. He can smell something warm and pleasantly spicy – he thinks it might be her. Not a perfume, but something natural to her. It pricks at his memory, familiar but not quite, and he lets his mind dwell on it for as long as it takes to claw his way back to some kind of control. When he feels like he can speak without growling, he asks, “Locked in a cave… We’ve been kidnapped?”

“Captured, I think, is the word. They got us at the conference – I think they flooded the conference center with an aerosol slow-acting sedative. You were never afraid or in pain, so no Hulk.”

“Smart.”

“Yes,” Natasha says. “You’ve been out for two days. Needle sticks along your veins, restraint marks on your wrists and prep work done for a spinal tap say they were taking samples and maybe running tests for those 48 hours. They left you in here with me about forty-five minutes ago.”

“Left me in an enclosed space with you so that—” Bruce grimaces. “Smart again. You said prep work done for a spinal tap—”

“But no puncture, so they had second thoughts.”

Bruce wonders how Natasha knows about the prep work – he takes stock of what he can feels of his own body, and realizes he’s still wearing the pants and boxers he’d put on the morning of the conference, but his torso and feet are bare. Trying not to picture needles in his arms and electrodes on his skin, he forces himself to think analytically. “Afraid the pain would break through the sedation, probably.”

“Mm. Is your head feeling better?” She sounds wary – Bruce can’t blame her.

“Yeah,” Bruce replies.

“Do you want to try opening your eyes?”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Bruce keeps his eyes tightly shut. He feels a whisper of touch across his right temple, where the muscles are tensely bunched, and he hears Natasha, closer this time, say, “You had your eyes open before and you seemed fine. But if you keep clenching those muscles so tightly, you’ll give yourself a headache, and I’d rather not deal with that again.”

“Good point.” Slowly, Bruce opens his eyes. _Still a cave_ , he thinks. “Where are you?”

“Do you think you can you turn your head?” _Without killing me_ , she doesn’t say, but Bruce hears it just fine.

“I think so,” he says, and tries turning slightly to the left—when his head handles that movement without pounding too badly, he turns a little farther. Natasha is perched on a protruding piece of stone – she’s wearing a black satin bra, a pair of black panties, and nothing else. For a moment, Bruce almost laughs with relief, because obviously this is a dream. He’d felt so fucking terrified and guilty, and all for nothing, because this is just an unusually coherent and disturbing iteration of the sort of dream he’s been having fairly regularly ever since he was twelve.

Then he takes in the details: the bloody gash on Natasha’s abdomen, the bruises on her wrists, and most of all, the look of jittery desperation haunting the back of her eyes. Bruce has wanted some sick things in his life, but he’s never gotten off on knowing a woman is afraid of him.

“Why are you, uh…” _Mostly naked_ , Bruce almost says, but he thinks that might not be the best way to put it.

She shrugs. “Humiliation and the implicit threat of rape, I’m assuming.”

“You said they were running tests on me for 48 hours. What happened to _you_ for those two days?” Natasha’s a precise speaker, and she’d said _rape_ , not _more rape_ , but Bruce is still afraid to hear—

“They made a half-hearted attempt to interrogate me, got bored with it, and shoved me in here. I think they mainly brought me along to keep you in line.”

“Bored?”

“I got the impression they weren’t allowed to rough me up too much – also smart.”

“Why smart?”

“If you’d woken up and found me missing fingers, covered with cigarette burns, and gang-raped, how angry do you think you’d have been?”

What do you say to that? Opting for understatement, Bruce murmurs, “Very.”

“And since the whole point of keeping me here as a human shield—”

“Is to stop the Other Guy from showing up—it would defeat the purpose.”

She nods.

“So your safety depends on me in more ways than one.”

“Yes.”

“Perfect.” Bruce has never failed at anything so spectacularly as he has failed at trying to keep the people close to him safe.

His head feels almost normal now, and he’s no longer so excruciatingly conscious of every heartbeat that sends blood pulsing through the veins along his skull. There’s still a lot he doesn’t know about their situation. He asks, “Can I try sitting up again?”

“I think—are you feeling better?” He nods. “Then yes.”

“Would you—if you could help me, maybe support my head…”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Something dark is running under and through her voice, and she doesn’t twitch a muscle to come and help.

“You know, I don’t think the extra two feet of distance you’re maintaining between us is going to save you if…” People always seem to think that. Or that if they don’t touch him, they’ll be safe. Or if they don’t make eye contact with him, they’ll be safe. Or if they pretend he’s not even there—

“It’s not that,” she bites off, stepping down from her rocky perch with something less than her usual grace.

Before Bruce can ask what she means, she’s kneeling beside him, sliding one hand under the back of his head and leaving the other one curved around his shoulder. Bruce tries to lift up his head, and while it does throb a little, it’s not too much.

“Okay?” she asks. When he nods, she helps him settle onto his elbows. Her right hand is threaded through his hair, cradling the back of his head, steady as iron. That scent he’d noticed before, warm and lush but not flowery, is stronger now. It must be her; Bruce tries not to think about it beyond noting to himself that he sure as hell wouldn’t smell that good after two days in a cave.

When half-sitting-up on his elbows proves to be bearable, Natasha helps him sit all the way up and rest his back against the wall. He takes deep breaths, trying to stay calm and keep his heart rate down; it’s made a little more difficult by the fact that there’s an extremely attractive woman in lingerie kneeling over him, close enough to kiss. “I think I’m all right,” he tells her. She doesn’t seem to hear him. She’s looking slightly downward—at her own hand on his bare shoulder, Bruce realizes. Her hands are warm, almost hot on his skin, still gripping tightly even though he doesn’t need the support anymore. “Natasha?” he asks, slightly worried. She hums, gaze still fixed on her own left hand. Her right hand, cupping the back of his head, slides forward, stroking through his hair, coming to rest at his jaw. The feel of it makes him shiver without knowing why, and she seems to snap out of it, stepping back quickly.

“Are you all right? Did they dose you with something?”

“I’m fine,” she says, returning to her perch on the opposite wall. Bruce isn’t so sure, but he doesn’t kid himself he’ll be able to get anything out of her that she doesn’t want to tell him. Instead, he checks out their surroundings. The cave is a little bigger than it seemed at first glance, about eight feet long, but still very narrow, with a low ceiling. Natasha wasn’t exaggerating—not that he thought she would, that’s not like her—if the Other Guy shows up, there’s a very good chance she’d be crushed against the walls. There’s a metal door at one end of the cave, with a window in the middle about five feet off the ground.

“Can they see us through the window?”

“Yes,” Natasha replies. “The glass is somewhat tinted, but I can tell when there’s someone looking through – they check in about every five minutes. There’s no electronic surveillance in here, no cameras or microphones.”

Solid rock, then – good for their privacy, bad for Natasha’s survival.

“I have to tell you, this is not really how I expected my weekend was going to go,” Bruce informs her.

“Me neither.”

Bruce had been asked to speak at the International Radiation and Nuclear Science Symposium this year, and normally the invitation would have been very politely tossed in the trash can, but that’s a lot harder to do when the invitation comes in person. Dr. Vyas had shaken Bruce’s hand like she wasn’t afraid of him, and guilt-tripped him by pointing out that she, along with every other gamma-ray expert on planet Earth, had had her equipment Bogarted by SHIELD with no notice or compensation on his say-so. She’d winked at him and told him she didn’t mind… as long as he came to the conference and explained to everyone what exactly it _was_ that all of their finely calibrated instruments had been commandeered to do, and how it worked.

Guilt might not have been enough – Bruce was a connoisseur of guilt, only susceptible to very high-quality, artisanally crafted guilt. But he was flattered. Flattered to be wanted for himself, Dr. Bruce Banner, for his _mind._ Stupid, of course. Especially since he’d just fallen for the same ridiculously simple ploy at SHIELD’s hands, not six months earlier. But he was weak, and wanted it, wanted the acclaim and the respect and the chance to play-act at a life he’d thrown away so long ago. And Natasha had been assigned to be his bodyguard, and he hadn’t even thought of the danger he was putting her in. He’d been blinded by visions of legitimacy, of coming back to a world he thought he’d been barred from.

“I bet you’re really sorry you got stuck babysitting me,” Bruce says with a wry smile. What a fucking joke. Tony, the whole team – being close with them and trusted by them had made him complacent. He’d fallen into a sense of security, an unforgivable delusion that he was only a danger to other people when the Other Guy came out to play. And because he’d forgotten, Natasha was trapped in a cave waiting to be beaten to death by her worst nightmare. Bruce fucked up, other people suffered. That was how it always was. He should never have let his guard down.

“I volunteered.”

“Really?”

She shrugs. “I thought it might be a good chance to spend some time with you outside of Avengers business.”

“Really,” Bruce says again. He honestly can’t tell if she’s kidding or not.

“Clint and I… go way back. I spar with Steve, and we’ve been to the symphony a few times. I wanted to spend some informal time with you.”

“To figure out my weaknesses?” Bruce jokes but not really.

“To learn something about you besides your weaknesses,” she replies, face and voice perfectly clean of emotion.

“Oh,” he mumbles. “Sorry.” Guilt, familiar and comfortable, nips at him; like everything else nowadays, it’s chased by anger ( _she used you once, manipulated you, of course you thought she’d do it again, what else were you supposed to think…_ ), which he cuts off at the knees with the ease of long practice ( _you tried to kill her and still she fought by your side, you’re allies, you train together, she’s been kind to you…_ ).

To get away from his thoughts, Bruce asks, “What about Tony? You don’t want to—”

Natasha’s lips thin. “I’ve spent enough time around Stark for a lifetime.”

“You really don’t like Tony, do you?”

“He spent a month talking to my tits instead of to me. It made an impression.”

Bruce winces. “It doesn’t make it okay, but… I think he was dying?”

“You’re in a pretty dire situation right now, and _you’re_ somehow managing to address me and not my breasts even though you have a better view than Stark ever got.”

Keeping his eyes in a respectful place has actually required a major effort of Bruce’s self-control – but he guesses that’s her point. You make the effort. “Fair enough,” he says. “Well, I guess if you wanted to get to know me, this is a sort of horribly perfect opportunity for it.”

“True,” she acknowledges, tilting her head – but she doesn’t say anything more. After his crack about learning his weaknesses, Bruce suspects it’s up to him to make an offering.

He starts, “Well, I’m an Aries,” and is rewarded when the corner of her mouth tilts up. “I don’t know what you want to know,” he admits. “I don’t really have any hobbies…”

“Besides Tony-sitting,” she says, dry, and Bruce can’t help smiling.

“Besides that,” he agrees.

A silence falls that Bruce might call comfortable, if it weren’t for the dark, the pain, and the knowledge that unfriendly eyes are watching through the window.

“I assume you’ve got some kind of escape plan?” he asks, rubbing his hands up and down his bare arms. It’s not cold enough to bother him after living in worse conditions the last couple of years, but it’s still cold enough to notice. Natasha doesn’t even have goosebumps – if anything, she looks warm.

“I have some thoughts, but nothing concrete.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“We’re being kept two levels underground, and the complex extends at least one level above-ground.” When Bruce raises an eyebrow, she explains, “I was conscious when they took me from the interrogation room to this cave, and the room outside it. There are at least one hundred armed personnel in the two below-ground levels, and some personnel, possibly unarmed, on the surface. The door is bolted from the outside. And there are… other variables,” she adds, looking tense. One of those variables must be Bruce himself, but he doesn’t know what the others would be, and he’s guessing it’s not good.

He offers, “I don’t feel like my head’s going to explode anymore, if that helps.”

Natasha nods. “That’s an asset.”

Something occurs to Bruce, and he turns his gaze on the parts of Natasha’s body he’s been trying _not_ to look at for the past several minutes. “What kind of shape are _you_ in?” he asks, getting up on his knees and shuffling closer to her, peering at the gash on her stomach. “You told me they weren’t allowed to rough you up ‘too much,’ but that sounds like they did rough you up at least at the beginning…” As he gets closer, Bruce can see bruises on the side of her face, on her upper arms, and a nasty cut twisting up the outside of her thigh. He can also see her breathing speed up, and see her shrink back against the wall, but he tries to ignore it. The last thing they need is for him to get _really_ angry.

“Don’t come any closer—” Natasha says – he can see real panic on her face, but he can _help_ , damn it, and even though there are a thousand ways he could hurt her, this is one way he won’t. Trying to keep his voice calm, he reaches out a hand, saying, “You’re injured, I can—”

But she dodges it, pulling her legs up onto the stone. “I mean it, don’t _touch_ me—”

Stubborn, Bruce shakes his head. “I’m a doctor, I want to help you—”

“I said, _don’t touch me_ —”

But by then, Bruce has already set a gentle hand next to the cut on her thigh, and it’s too late. Before he knows what’s happening, there are rough hands in his hair. Natasha’s body collides with his and she shoves her knee between his thighs, pressing them apart. Her skin is plastered against his and her teeth are scraping along his neck and her touch _burns_ him, her skin is so fevered. So hot, heat pouring off of her body in waves…

 _Heat_ , he realizes. _Of course. How could I not have_ —

As quick as a blink, Natasha’s gone – back up on her rock perch, arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees, hands gripping her own elbows so tightly that her fingertips are white.

Well. That explains why she’s been refusing to touch him. Explains quite a few things, actually.

“I apologize,” she says, voice as flat as a string stretched tight. “I overestimated my control.”

“It’s… it’s all right.” His mouth is dry. “It’s my fault—you told me not to touch you—”

“None of this is your fault,” she says, cutting him off.

Bruce almost laughs, but she seems to mean it. Instead, he says, “So by ‘other variables,’ you meant…”

“I’m… compromised,” Natasha says, sounding like the words were pulled out of her throat with a fishhook. “It will be a distraction.”

“How far into your heat are you?” Bruce asks, then hears his own words and curses himself, blushing furiously. “I’m sorry, forget I said that. I had no right—”

Natasha shakes her head. She says, “Not far – half a day. It will get worse. In another 24 hours, I’ll be a liability.”

Bruce has never been able to read her that well, but even he can tell how it pains her to admit that.

“So when I thought this was your worst nightmare, it’s actually your _two_ worst nightmares combined.” Bruce smiles – he can’t help it. It’s just how he reacts when the world gets worse than even _he_ thought it could. “That’s… really. That’s just completely awful.”

“Your sympathy is much appreciated,” Natasha replies, and Bruce laughs before he can help himself.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Natasha shrugs. Her eyes stay on him.

A thought occurs to Bruce, and he frowns. “You’re not on the Pill? Or the Patch—”

“I had an implant.”

“Okay… so what’s—”

“You capture a prisoner. You discover that she has an unknown object implanted under her skin. What do you think it is?”

It doesn’t take Bruce more than a second. “I think it’s a tracking device.”

“And you cut it out.” She raises a finger to tap against the bloody gash a few inches to the left of her navel.

“Right.” The sudden drop in hormones would have triggered the heat—maybe made it more intense than it otherwise would have been. “That’s… not good.”

Natasha shrugs again, arm still wrapped around her legs. “Poor design kills. SHIELD is going to have to rethink that. _I_ should have thought of that.”

“They missed my patch.” It’s a prototype – Bruce’s biochem and Tony’s design, invisible and mostly undetectable. If they get out of this, Natasha should have one – he should have offered them to the team as soon as the prototypes were complete. One more failure. “If I took it off and gave it to you—”

Natasha starts to shake her head, then reconsiders, pinning him with a look. “You’re the genius. Would it work? I’ve never heard…”

“Probably not,” Bruce admits. “The hormones are too different. There’s maybe a one-in-twenty chance my patch would work for you even though you’re an alpha, if we catch the heat early enough, but I’ve never tested it.”

“One in twenty’s not good enough.” Natasha’s gaze sharpens as she thinks through the angles. “Best case scenario, putting it on does nothing for me and taking it off does nothing to you. Worst case scenario, it makes me sick or makes the heat worse, and without the patch’s protection, you go into your heat. And then we’re really screwed.”

Hard to argue with that. Bruce doesn’t try. She’s probably forgotten more than he ever knew about how an operative’s biology affects their ability to carry out a mission. Which begs the question…

“What do you usually do?” Bruce asks.

She doesn’t pretend not to know what he’s talking about. “I go off the suppressors once a year—”

“Medically recommended is three times a year,” Bruce says, feeling like a hypocrite – he’s taken suppressors continuously ever since the accident.

“Thank you, _Dr_. Banner.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m aware. If I ever end up living the kind of life where I’m in more danger from suppressor shock than from being vaporized by invading aliens, I’ll certainly take that into account.”

Bruce considers that. Again, he can’t really argue. “You go off the suppressors once a year, _very sensibly_ …” he prompts – she graces him with half a smile.

“If Clint’s around, I go to him. The couple of times he wasn’t, I locked myself in my quarters and rode it out.”

“Is he, uh… your mate?” It never occurs to Bruce to ask if _Natasha_ is _Clint’s_ mate. Natasha isn’t any man’s anything, except his better. She’s the modifier, not the object. The fact that she can just casually say she locked _herself_ in and rode a heat out alone is proof of that. The self-control it implies is—Bruce wouldn’t believe it of anyone else, probably. Betas can usually ride it out; even omegas, if they’re motivated, though it’s harder. It’s a little different for alphas. Lots of alphas think they’re going to ride it alone, but almost none of them get to the age of eighteen without realizing that, if they mean it, they’re going to need to get someone _else_ to lock them in, and even then, it’ll be a killer.

“No. Clint’s not my mate. But I trust him.” _And I don’t trust anyone else_ , she doesn’t say, but Bruce hears it anyway.

The self-control she’s displaying _now_ is impressive enough. Before, after he’d touched her, she’d been holding herself still with white-knuckled hands, but as they’ve been talking, her grip has loosened. She’s carrying on a conversation in full, coherent sentences—and making jokes, no less—with an unmated and half-naked omega no more than a foot away. And it doesn’t even look like she’s sweating.

“I guess it’s a good thing your Alpha doesn’t like me,” Bruce says, because that’s all he can figure – there’s no other reason for any alpha, even one with self-control as brilliant and burning as Natasha’s, to not at least be struggling in the presence of an omega classed as _friend_ not _foe_.

“The Alpha likes you. A _lot_ ,” she admits, sounding irritated.

Bruce can’t even wrap his head around that—both the control that statement implies, and the bizarre idea that Natasha’s Alpha would be drawn to someone that Natasha’s conscious self is terrified of. If he weren’t sitting down, she could’ve knocked him over with a whisper, and even as it is, he feels winded, like she reached a hand into his lungs and pulled out his breath. All he can think to say is, “Is that—that doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea. The Alpha,” Natasha says, through her teeth, “is _stupid_. She looks at you, and all she sees is – _finally_ – an omega who’s just as dangerous as she is.”

When Bruce was just a boring little nerd with a lab and a girlfriend far too good for him, he’d never really understood the way people in Western cultures talked about “their Alpha” or “their Omega” as somehow separate from themselves. Your instincts are a part of you, Bruce had always figured, and however embarrassed they made you or however different their urges seemed from the urges of your conscious mind, they were still fundamentally _you_. To deny that by distancing yourself from them was nonsensical at best and cowardly at worst, he’d thought. Bruce understands a little better, now, the desire to name the part of yourself that you most fear, understands that he was wrong—naming the monster can be a way of facing it. It gives you an antagonist against which to struggle.

“You see why we can’t wait to be rescued,” Natasha says grimly, breaking into Bruce’s wandering train of thought. “But if I can get the guards to remove me from this cave, this could end up working to our advantage. My senses will be amplified, I’ll be more than usually aggressive and alert to threats. If they take me now, before I’m too far gone, I’ll still have my mind. I could fight to the surface.”

“Natasha…” Bruce is lost for words to describe what a terrible plan that is. “You told me yourself there are at least a hundred people between here and the entrance. You remember telling me that, right?”

“If you have a better plan, Bruce, now would be the time to mention it,” she replies – her face is smooth as always, but there’s a growling undertone in her voice.

There is one pretty simple solution. “Your Alpha wants me.” Bruce holds his tone steady, spreads his hands – it’s something between a shrug and an offering – _here I am_ and _no big deal_ at once. “So she can have me.” His voice shakes just a little on the last syllable. He hopes she won’t hold it against him.

“Even if I thought you meant that… She can have _you_ ,” Natasha repeats, the skin around her eyes tightening. “And the first time I push you too hard against the wall, the Hulk can snap my spine over his knee. The only upside I can see to that is not living long enough to be tortured, and I like to think I can do a little better than that if I can get them to take me out of here.” Her voice is shaking, too. The fear is in her eyes, the need to fight or run, but there’s nowhere to run.

“I wouldn’t—” But he can’t finish the sentence. There’s a reason he’s taken suppressors continuously ever since the accident, and even out of heat, he hasn’t dared to take anyone but another omega to bed. Anger, he keeps at a permanent simmer, and his heart rate, he’s learned to control. But he’s never wanted to test whether the Other Guy knows the difference between a real fight and a rough fuck.

“You wouldn’t mean to.” Her voice is steady, and her eyes pin him against the stone. “You wouldn’t do it out of anger. But the one truly reliable trigger for the Hulk is physical threat, injury or pain. Maybe you’re used to finishing-school alphas that think yanking on your hair a little is really letting the beast out to play.” Her gaze sharpens, and her voice gets lower, rough. “I was trained, from my very first heat, to channel mine into the kill. My Alpha won’t be satisfied with a dainty shove here and a little love bite there. I will write my name on your skin in bruises, and I will hold you down—”

She’s trying to scare him, he can see that, but Bruce is just grateful that his body doesn’t self-lubricate outside of heat. His erection, he can mostly hide behind his bent leg, but there’s no way she wouldn’t catch the smell of him wet for her.

“Am I wrong?” she asks, eyes hard. “Have you cooled your heat with an alpha who survived the experience?”

“I haven’t,” Bruce says, low. “With anyone. Or without. Not in heat, not since…”

She leans back and nods; all right, maybe not such a simple solution after all. But he can’t just let her throw herself at an unknown number of armed soldiers – they’re smart people, they have to be able to do better than that.

Bruce tries to think of a different angle; there are some facts they’re stuck with, but they may be able to change how their captors perceive those facts. After a moment, he suggests, “What if we make them think—not try to hide that you’re in heat, that’s the truth we could build on—but make them think… you’re in an omega’s heat?”

Natasha is quiet, but she gives him a look of equal parts respect and skepticism. He can see that she immediately likes the idea, but she’s turning it over in her mind, poking at the weak spots, testing the sharp edges.

“No reason they would know your orientation or mine. Mine is more of a risk – I’ve been in the intelligence community for a long time, and things get around. But even if they’ve heard about me, it wouldn’t be hard to persuade them they’d heard wrong. It’s a good story: a woman omega assassin, faking an alpha orientation for protection – but caught out by her heat, betrayed by her body. They would like that. And if they like it, they’ll believe it.”

“They’d believe I’m an alpha, too,” Bruce offers. She looks up at him for a moment, then nods. “People always think… that’s what the Other Guy is. They’re wrong, but that’s what they think – that he’s the ultimate alpha, alpha to the hundredth power. It’s easy to believe. So if they believe all that—”

“If they believe that, they’ll be complacent,” Natasha says. “An alpha in heat is a threat, but an omega in heat is—”

“A hole to fuck,” Bruce says. Natasha draws up short, then meets his eyes and nods again.

“That’s what they’ll believe,” she says. It’s kind of sweet of her to bother implying to Bruce that’s not what _she_ thinks. It doesn’t matter. He said she could have him. He meant it.

“It’s not the first time I’ve taken advantage of that assumption,” she adds.

“I thought that might be the case.”

Natasha grins. He’s never seen her wearing a smile that shows her teeth before; it makes her look like a wolf.

Thinking aloud, Bruce continues, “So, okay, they’ll take you out of here…”

“Leaving you free to—”

“—let the Other Guy out to play.”

“The transformation won’t be comfortable in such a small space—”

“But I won’t have to worry about killing you,” Bruce finishes. Trying to fit a smile on his face, he mumbles, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Natasha lets out a snort of amusement, and Bruce blinks. “You know the A-Team?”

“Clint and Coulson loved that show,” she admits, a split-second hitch in her voice before she says Coulson’s name. “They would watch it in all-night marathons. It was terrible.”

“Terrible,” Bruce agrees solemnly.

A moment of comfortable silence settles around them before Natasha breaks it, saying, “We’ll need an explanation for why _you’re_ not fucking me.”

“Can’t I just be a decent person?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “These men don’t have your scruples. They won’t believe that you have them, either. You should say you’re mated. They may respect that.”

“Mated to…?”

After thinking for a second, she gives him her wolfish grin again. “Stark.”

He says incredulously, “Tony?” as if there’s some other Stark she could be referring to.

“You two are joined at the hip. I’d believe it.”

“That’s horrifying,” Bruce says faintly.

“I thought you liked him,” Natasha says, smirking.

“I do,” Bruce protests. “It’s still horrifying.” He shakes his head to dispel the image of himself as Tony’s alpha, and a thought occurs to him. “We still have a problem.”

“Yes?”

“You won’t… smell right,” he points out. “It’s going to be pretty hard to convince them that you’re an omega in heat if you’re giving off the scent of an alpha’s heat.”

Natasha shrugs. “Nothing to be done about it. If we’re telling them that you’re an alpha, and they know we’ve been in an enclosed space together for almost 24 hours, they won’t be surprised that I smell like alpha.”

“But you still won’t have the omega pheromones,” Bruce counters. “They’ll be expecting that, and it could sink the whole thing if they don’t smell it.”

Natasha looks him in the eye and admits, calmly, “It’s a problem. I acknowledge that. I don’t think it’s as serious as you seem to, because in my experience, if you present a bunch of poorly supervised men with the opportunity to fuck someone who looks like me while she’s moaning and begging, they don’t have too many second thoughts. But I acknowledge that it’s a weakness in the plan. We’ll just have to be ready to adapt if it becomes necessary.”

“I could… take my patch off,” Bruce offers. “We could—we’re in a small, enclosed space, our pheromones would mingle, they won’t be able to tell which is which—”

“No,” Natasha says, shaking her head. “Dangerous. I told you, the Alpha wants you. Even out of heat. If I could smell the heat on you, I don’t know what—it would be bad. And if the plan doesn’t work, you’d be alone here, in heat and unprotected.”

“Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’d put a lot of faith into your control,” Bruce says quietly. He keeps his eyes on the floor of the cave. “But even if it were too much, it wouldn’t be—that would be all right. If you’re worried about your own safety, I completely understand. But if you’re worried about me, you shouldn’t—I would. It’s fine. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

Bruce is expecting another quick refusal, but when he looks up from the ground, Natasha is staring at him, silent. Her eyes are dark, and her lips are pressed tightly together, and suddenly Bruce is imagining it; he can’t help himself. _No finishing-school_ _alpha_ , she’d snarled, and he believes it – thinks of her holding him down, hands tight and steady on his wrists; thinks of her sinking her teeth into the soft, vulnerable skin of his throat, the inside of his elbows, his thighs. It’s been so fucking long, but even if his last lover had left him only yesterday, it wouldn’t have done any good. He’s always known—and tried, out of respect, to ignore—that Natasha is incredibly attractive. He never thought about what it would be like, with her, but now that he _is_ , he can’t seem to fucking _stop_.

He wants it and he hates himself for wanting it. His Omega is already panting for it – in his head, he’s already on his knees, on his back, on his belly for her. Beautiful, strong, dangerous and powerful but _controlled_ , exquisitely and unfailingly _controlled_ , even in violence. She’s everything he’s not – a scalpel of brushed, gleaming stainless steel where Bruce is a jagged chunk of concrete, torn out of a sidewalk and only good for turning a fragile skull into a bowl of spattered pink slop.

“You need…” Natasha says, and Bruce drags his brain back on track. “You need,” she repeats, every syllable crisp and clear, “to _not say things like that_. Please.” She closes her eyes and inhales quickly, letting it out in a long, slow sigh. She meets his eyes and says, “The Alpha wants you badly, but she won’t take you if you’re truly unwilling. But her ‘truly unwilling’ standards are pretty high, and she’ll push.”

“I’m saying I’m willing,” Bruce says, not sure if he made that clear, but she bites out a sharp, frustrated noise and says, “ _Don’t_ say that, either. Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is.”

Bruce flushes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.”

Natasha doesn’t reply – just nods and looks away.

After a moment, Bruce breaks the silence with, “So.”

“So?”

“We have a plan.”

“Yes,” Natasha agrees.

“…what now?”

She shrugs. It’s a more abrupt shrug than her usual. Most of Natasha’s usual gestures, Bruce would describe as noncommittal. The heat is like the Other Guy – noncommittal isn’t really in its repertoire.

“We wait,” she replies. “You’re still suffering the aftereffects of whatever they dosed you with. I don’t want to make our move until you’re steadier on your feet. At least a few hours.”

“If you can sleep,” he suggests, still feeling his way, “it would help. You’ll have some pretty intense dreams, but you won’t have the strain of maintaining control wearing you down.”

Natasha nods and folds herself down on the floor without a word, her bare skin against the rock floor of the cave.

“That doesn’t look comfortable,” Bruce observes.

“It’s not,” she says, eyes closed.

“Do you want my pants?” _That sounds…_ “To put on the ground,” Bruce explains hastily. “To sleep on. It’s not much, but at least there’ll be something between you and the rock.”

“Then _you’ll_ be uncomfortable,” she points out.

“I’ve slept on worse.”

“So have I.” _Touché_.

“I just think—”

Through clenched teeth she says, “You’ve been wearing them next to your skin for at least hours, maybe days. It’s going to be hard enough for me to get to sleep without rolling around in your scent.”

Bruce would wish for the ground to swallow him up, but it sort of has, and it hasn’t stopped him from shoving his foot in his mouth again.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says quietly.

“It’s fine,” she replies, but he can tell it’s not. Her beautiful, blazing control is thinning, and he forced her to acknowledge it.

*

As soon as Natasha’s asleep, Bruce reaches up behind his ear and peels off the patch. Even out of heat, he wants to spread his legs for her – it won’t take long for their heats to sync. Natasha is a brilliant actor – she deceived the god of lies and tricked the Trickster – but if their captors have an alpha with half a brain and any sense of smell, they’ll detect the absence of omega scent on her, and the plan could fall apart. Bruce has become very skilled at keeping a leash on his impulses. If the plan succeeds, then by the time Bruce can’t stop the heat from affecting his behavior anymore, they’ll be safe. If it fails, then it doesn’t matter how far gone he is.

And if they try to…

Well. The Other Guy doesn’t feel heat. The first alpha that thinks Bruce is easy prey will find that out the hard way.

*

“What the hell did you do?”

As Bruce fights his way to consciousness, he can feel the simmering warmth under his skin, and when he opens his eyes to see Natasha standing over him, looking furious and smelling like melting amber ten times stronger than before, he knows it worked. “That was fast,” he says, pushing himself to a sitting position. It’s not unheard of for proximity to a compatible partner’s heat to bring on your own heat overnight, but it’s not common, either. They got lucky.

“You took your patch off.”

“Yes,” Bruce says. No point in denying it – she can probably smell it all over him.

“After I told you not to,” she snarls, crouching to get in his face. Bruce sways toward the radiating heat off her body; he can’t help it. She snarls again, frustrated, and steps away to put space between them.

“All the bad consequences you mentioned were bad consequences to _me_. It was my choice to risk them or not,” he points out, as steadily as he can with the deep, sweet _want_ flickering through him.

“I’m supposed to protect you.”

“We’re a team.” He gets to his feet and holds her gaze, not giving an inch.

Eyes flashing, she counters, “You are a _danger_ to me.”

“Always,” Bruce agrees.

She stares at him, breathing hard, eyes hot, for a long minute. “ _Damn_ it,” she says, hitting the rock wall with the flat of her hand and breaking eye contact.

“You’ll get us out,” Bruce says.

Instead of replying, she straightens up and tells him, “Your pheromones need to end up on my skin – pulse points would be best. Wrists, back of the knees, neck. Legs will be tricky since you have pants, but I’m flexible. They’re watching. Push me against the wall, and get your body between me and the door – back away when I tell you to, and then we’re go.”

“We’re go?”

“I’m not staying in here one second longer.”

“All right, but—”

“ _Now_.”

 _Now_ , Bruce thinks. As he draws closer and closer to her, to the smell of her skin,the voice of his precious thread of self-control murmurs, _This is a lie, this is a lie, this is all a lie_.

He backs her against the rock wall ( _she steps back to the wall and he can’t help but follow, chasing her warmth, drunk on her scent_ ).

She tries half-heartedly to push him away, moaning ( _her hands lock around his wrists_ ).

Overpowering her, he pins her to the rock with his superior weight and strength ( _at the feel of her hands, his knees give out and he falls into her like a stone into the sea_ ).

She gives in, yielding to him, spreading her legs around his body so easily ( _focused on the task at hand, she slides her pulse points against his own, skin against skin, blood beating so close to the surface_ ).

She’s lost to it, desperate, out of control, groaning and rutting herself against him like an animal ( _she covers the last pulse points, at the neck and the groin, no way she can miss how hard he is for her, how close he is to losing everything and begging her for it, he hates himself, god, how he hates—)_

“Back away,” she whispers in his ear, and he throws himself back against the opposite wall, flushed with shame.

“Don’t play the hero. Stick to the plan,” she mutters, looking hot-eyed and seductive, like she’s saying something else – they can only see, not hear, he remembers. Then she throws herself at the door.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Bruce says involuntarily, at the loud sudden bang.

“Please!” Natasha cries, tugging at her hair with one fist, pounding on the door with the other. “Oh, please, I need—”

She throws her body against the door again and again – no question that they’ve got to have the guards’ attention now – pausing in between to fondle her own breasts while mouthing desperate nonsense at the window.

Bruce can hear a commotion outside the thick steel of the door; then, over the sound of Natasha’s pleading, he hears a scraping sound, metal against metal.

Natasha must hear it, too. She turns to him and says, “They’re coming in. When they take me away, give me ten minutes. Then come find me.”

She turns back to the door just in time for it to swing heavily open. On the other side, there are soldiers in fatigues that Bruce doesn’t recognize, pointing rifles at them through the doorway.

Natasha falls to her knees, and drags a splayed hand up the inside of her own thigh, parting her legs around it. “I—I can’t,” she whimpers. “I can’t help it, I need it, I _need_ it, I need someone to—to—oh, god, I can’t.”

The guards suddenly start laughing, and one of them, wearing an insignia of rank on his collar, pushes past the two guards in front. “What do you need, pretty lady?” he asks, sneering.

“I… I need…” Bruce has to look away from the abject humiliation on Natasha’s face –even knowing it’s just an act, it’s too painful to watch. “I need—something… inside me. I need someone to—” Her voice breaks, and Bruce feels sick to his stomach. “—to, to f-fuck me.”

The soldier’s eyes narrow with contempt, and he holds a hand out as if to backhand Natasha across the face – she flinches from it, but then sways toward it like she can’t help herself, like she needs the touch more than anything. He laughs again. “Not so tough now, are you, you little bitch.”

“You’ve got to get her out of here,” Bruce pleads. He can’t watch much more of this. “I can’t—I’m mated, I can’t breed her—”

“Don’t worry,” one of the goons says, grinning. “We’ll take her off your hands. We can give her what she needs.”

“Dr. Banner!” Natasha cries, eyes wide and panicked as she struggles – using his title to make it seem like they might not be that close, like he might be able to sleep at night if they take her out of here like this. “Don’t let them—oh, please, I won’t tell, Tony never has to know…”

Bruce carefully keeps a straight face, grateful for the reminder that this isn’t real – that he’s not really abandoning her to be—

“You could,” she babbles, “you could do it, you could fuck me, you could fill me up—”

“I’m sorry, Agent—” He follows her lead, using her title to create distance, but he chokes off her last name on the off chance that their captors may not know it. They wanted him, and only picked her up to keep him in line. A mean satisfaction washes through him as he thinks, _They may have no fucking clue how much danger they’ve been in this whole time. How much worse it’s going to get._

And then she’s gone, and the door clangs shut behind her and her captors. _Ten minutes_ , Bruce remembers.

They’re not the longest ten minutes of his life – that would be the first time he woke up surrounded by wreckage and strangers’ bodies, when he tried to take the pulse in a cold wrist peeking out from under a flattened wall and found nothing – but it’s still brutal. He’s afraid for her, afraid enough that it takes all his concentration to keep the Other Guy from showing up long enough to give Natasha the ten minutes she asked him for. The fear is strong enough to block out everything else, even the heat.

When he counts ten minutes, Bruce focuses his mind on how cruelly and unfairly this whole situation fucking sucks—and what he might find, out there, if he’s too late—and it’s lights out.

*

Hulk smashes puny door. Then Hulk smashes guards as guards run away or try shooting. Puny shootings annoy Hulk, like itching!

One guard runs away fast – too fast for Hulk. Hulk follows.

Other guards run out puny doors, try shooting at Hulk, more itching, more smashing. All the same – shooting, itching, smashing, but Hulk is not bored. Hulk is helping Spider Lady.

Spider Lady!

Hulk stops smashing. More guards run at Hulk, Hulk swats them like bugs.

Where is Spider Lady? Hulk has to help Spider Lady.

Hulk sees guard with shiny collar talk at thing coiled up in ear, then run. Not running same way as other guards. Hulk follows.

Lots of smashing here, too. Not too much smashing – doesn’t slow Hulk down.

Then Hulk sees smashed guard _Hulk_ didn’t smash.

Hulk grins. Hulk follows Shiny-Collar Guard, sees more smashed guards.

Hulk hears screaming.

Shiny-Collar Guard runs into big room, stops. Sees smashed guards on floor. Hulk hears shooting sound. Shiny-Collar Guard falls down.

Hulk goes into big room. Many smashed guards.

Smashed guards on floor. Smashed guards on puny tables. One smashed guard stuck on wall with metal spike.

Spider Lady is in the middle of the floor, holding guns.

Shiny-Collar Guard moves on floor. Hulk picks up and smashes on wall. Still moves. Hulk smashes more! Stops moving.

Hulk throws away Shiny-Collar Guard, looks at Spider Lady. Waits.

“Come with me,” Spider Lady says, and runs out of room. Hulk follows.

Spider Lady runs in hallways, in big rooms, in little rooms. Everywhere more shooting, more smashing. Spider Lady runs, smashes, and Hulk follows. Hulk smashes, too. Hulk smashes, follows, runs, smashes, runs—

Spider Lady stops in hallway. Hulk looks, but no more things to smash. Hulk waits. Still nothing to smash. Spider Lady does something with big shiny screens showing pictures of rooms and hallways, pushes puny buttons.

Then Spider Lady looks at Hulk. “We’re done,” she says. “We wiped out the below-ground complex. In half an hour, we killed one hundred and fifty armed mercenaries. Poorly trained armed mercenaries, but still. Not bad.”

“Spider Lady smash,” Hulk says, approvingly.

“You know, if I were in my right mind, I would probably be completely fucking terrified right now,” she says, looking up at Hulk. “But as it stands, I feel _invincible_. That’s probably not healthy.”

Hulk doesn’t know what most of that means, but Hulk gets some of it. “Hulk not hurt Spider Lady,” says Hulk.

“No?” she asks, coming closer. “You did once. You would have done more. What’s changed?”

“Other One trust Spider Lady. Spider Lady keep Other One safe. Other One know.”

“Yes,” she says. “I will. The Spider Lady likes Bruce, too.”

Hulk grunts. “Spider Lady need more smash?”

“No, thank you,” she says, smiling – not fake-smiling or scared-smiling, but happy-smiling. Most people don’t like when Hulk talks about smashing. Hulk likes Spider Lady.

“No more smashing,” Hulk says philosophically. “Okay. Other One now.”

*

Bruce lands on the ground, _hard_ , blinking up at Natasha.

“Are you all right?” she asks him.

“Shouldn’t I be asking _you_ that?” Bruce says. Natasha gives him an impatient look, and Bruce says, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good.” She offers him a hand up. Bruce takes it, and tries to stand, but the transition took a lot out of him, as usual, and his knees buckle, sending him back to the ground. “Sorry,” he says, but Natasha shakes her head.

“It’s fine. Let me help.” She crouches down beside Bruce and helps him stand, her hands blood-sticky but steady on his back and his upper arm. She smells amazing.

He looks down at the bloody handprint on his bicep and says dumbly, “You touched me.”

Natasha takes a step back, but says, “Violence takes the edge off of the heat. You know that. Can you walk?”

Bruce decides to actually gather some data on that before ending up on the ground ass-first again, and when his first experimental steps seem stable, he looks up at Natasha and says, “Yes.”

“Good,” she replies. “Follow me.”

As Bruce traces Natasha’s footsteps through a series of taupe, sterile-looking hallways, he notices that she’s cinched some too-big fatigue pants around her waist, and asks, “What happened? While I was, uh… out to lunch.”

“Exactly what we expected – they dragged me to a central location and rounded up the troops to ‘interrogate’ me. They actually _lined up_ outside the holding cell, which was very considerate of them – lining themselves up in a neat little row to be knocked down. Like bowling pins.”

Bruce considers the simile. “Did you get a strike?”

“Of course,” she says, looking over her shoulder to grace him with a smile. Her voice is rich with blood and sex and satisfaction, and the look on her face— _god,_ he wants her. He doesn’t remember much of what the Other Guy sees and hears. He never does. But he remembers a flash of one figure standing in the middle of a crop circle of bodies like a message to the farthest stars, _Danger_. _Danger_ and _vengeance_. He wants her hands around his wrists so badly his own hands shake.

“You bowled a pretty good game yourself,” she murmurs, appreciative – it’s not him she wants, he reminds himself. _She’s_ not even the one who wants. Bruce knows all about when your id wants something that your superego abhors.

“That was the Other Guy,” Bruce mutters, avoiding her eyes, avoiding looking at any part of her, blood-spattered and perfect. “I’ve never been any good at bowling. Did—he didn’t hurt you, did he?” The fact that all four of her limbs are still attached and functioning gives him a pretty good guess, but he has to ask.

“No,” she says. Her head tilts, considering. “We’re buddies now, the Big Guy and I.”

Bruce’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really.”

“He admires my smashing,” she deadpans, which, now that Bruce thinks about it, makes sense. More quietly, she says, “He promised not to hurt me again. He says… you trust me.”

Bruce replies, “I do,” still trying to wrap his head around the implications of the Other Guy promising not to hurt someone – making any kind of promises at all.

“We’re going to the infirmary so I can disinfect these cuts. Eat these on the way.” Natasha produces some energy bars from the pockets of the fatigue pants, and thrusts two in his face. Bruce is ravenous, so he’d have eaten them either way, but they’re actually not bad.

In the infirmary, Bruce takes the rubbing alcohol and antibiotic ointment she hands him and goes to work on the two cuts on Natasha’s back while she deals with the few wounds on her arms, and the gash their captors left when they cut out her implant.

“Fatigue pants and a black bra,” Bruce comments as soon as he’s done. “All the rage on the runways of Milan.”

She pulls the belt off of the pants and they fall around her ankles. Bruce’s brain sputters like a dying battery.

“I haven’t had a bath, shower, or drop of soap in three days,” she says. “I’m taking a two-minute shower.” She reaches back to unhook her bra.

Bruce is glad that that statement doesn’t require a coherent verbal response, because he doesn’t think he’s capable of one. He turns his back like a gentleman and tries not to think too loudly. Violence took the edge off of the heat for him, too, but that won’t last forever.

“Your turn,” he hears, “if you want.”

He waits until he hears the rustle of clothing, then steps past Natasha into the shower. When he comes out, something comes flying at him – he catches it on instinct. It’s a pair of scrub pants. He tugs them on, looking up at Natasha, who’s back in her bra and fatigue pants. “No shirts?”

She nods down at a body on the floor – the corpse’s legs are nude, obviously the source of the scrub pants. The scrub top is reddish-brown with a few green patches. “If you really want it, I’ll help you remove it—”

“No, that’s all right,” Bruce says, grimacing. “I think—”

There’s a rumble – deep, grinding, and mechanical, coming from the lower level. A large grid of white lights to the left of the door suddenly starts blinking red.

Bruce says, “That’s not good.”

“No,” Natasha agrees. “Come on, the hangar is this way.” She takes off through the door and down the hall, and Bruce follows.

In the hangar, Natasha sizes up the planes with a look and waves him into a compact craft that looks more than a bit like one of their own Quinjets.

“Do you know how to fly this thing?” Bruce asks. Natasha drops into the pilot’s seat, starts flipping switches that make the HUD light up like Christmas, and levels a withering look at Bruce over her shoulder.

“Never mind,” Bruce mumbles.

The back of the plane lifts up behind him, and Natasha orders him into a seat in the back of the plane for takeoff. He can feel the rumble of the engines as he straps himself to one of the benches on either side of the back section of the aircraft. He wants to ask where they’re going, but Natasha seems intent on the plane’s controls, and for all her apparent confidence, he doesn’t want to distract her during an unfamiliar task.

Moments later, he feels the plane lift off. He stays in his seat and tries not to think about being in an enclosed space with an alpha in heat for the second time in as many days.

His own heat has started rushing back in with a vengeance. Adrenaline bought him some time, but he’s starting to feel it again now: the persistent empty ache paired with simmering skin-hunger that he remembers from the time in his life when he’d dared to let someone touch him that way. It’s been so, so long—but he can’t think about that. He tries to force his brain to stay focused on the practicalities. Unbuckling himself from the bench, he walks up to join Natasha in the cockpit.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“New York. We were somewhere in northern Alberta. I’ve plotted a fairly direct course to Stark Tower, but we’ll be passing over uninhabited areas as much as possible.”

Bruce frowns. “Why uninhabited areas?”

“In case we need to land.”

“Why would we need to—” Bruce chokes the question off. She’d said, _In 24 hours, I’ll be a liability_. “Right.” His hands clench on the headrest of the co-pilot’s seat. “Sorry. Should we be worried about pursuit?”

“No.” Natasha smiles briefly, still focused on the console. “I rigged the complex’s fuel tanks to explode; the heat signature popped up on our sensors a few minutes ago. The hangar and its contents will have been obliterated.”

“Nice,” Bruce says, impressed. He’s used to leaving burned and broken wreckage in his wake, but it’s kind of a pleasant novelty not to be the person solely—or even mostly—responsible for it. _He likes my smashing_ , he remembers her saying—Bruce has to admit, he kind of sees the Other Guy’s point.

“Thanks,” Natasha replies, still staring fixedly at the screens in front of her. “I need to set the autopilot and figure out the communications system. Can you go check the compartments, see what supplies we have?”

Bruce can hear the first threads of strain in her voice, and he suspects that her request comes more from the need to put some physical space between them than from the need to assess their stock… but one of the perfect and frightening things about Natasha is that she never seems to do anything for just one reason. And they do need to know what they’ve got.

He heads to the back of the plane and starts opening up the compartments above the bench seats. As he rummages around, he begins narrating as he goes to try and distract himself from the now near-constant awareness of how close she is and how good she smells. “This one seems to have crash-landing supplies: there’s a blanket, a couple of flashlights… some food. MREs, granola bars, jerky, dried fruit and nuts. This one has… oh, guns. Great. Next is a spare uniform, but just one…”

“What kind of guns?”

Bruce turns to give her a dubious look, and his eyes catch on the light sheen of sweat glistening on her bare shoulders. The effect of the fight must be running out – she’s got to be hurting up there, but he knows talking about it will only make it worse. He tries to focus on her question. “I know more about weapons than I used to, but I still don’t think I know anything about these guns that would be usef—”

“You have two Ph.D.s, Dr. Banner, I know you know your colors and shapes,” she snaps. “I’m not asking you to help me outfit a guerrilla squadron, I’m—describe them to me. It helps. Violence sublimates the heat, and if I’m thinking about shooting people, I’m not thinking about fucking them.”

Bruce does his best to describe the firearms, tries to make it into a little guessing game, seeing how quickly she can identify the make from just the rudimentary information he can give her. But it’s not—the skills he’s picked up to live with the constant rumble and roar of anger don’t totally translate when it comes to lust. Every little thing adds another spark to the slow-burning fire – her voice has gone low and throaty, and a transfixing single drop of sweat is slowly writhing down her spine. The perverse thing is that every passing moment that her control endures makes him burn hotter.

It’s not that he wants to see it broken; he got an eyeful of what that might look like when she was play-acting back in the cave, and it turned his stomach. But Bruce knows—Bruce had finally learned, by the time she came to find him in Kolkata—that control doesn’t have to be broken; it can be ceded, or abandoned, or set aside. Power doesn’t have to be a clenched fist. There’s power in the open hand, too – in the act of letting go.

Bruce is a monster in a man’s skin, and when he opens his hands and lets his self-control tumble out, he’s just a bigger, better monster. But Natasha is different. Her control weighs heavily, too, Bruce can tell – a sword of steel and a suit of armor more beautiful and terrible than even Tony’s. But if she set it aside, Bruce… Bruce doesn’t know what he would see, but he can’t imagine how it could diminish her. It makes him wish he was more than he is; makes him wish he was the kind of man who _deserved_ to see her without her armor. He wishes he was worth that. He can’t blame her for thinking he’s not. Clint Barton is a lucky man.

“Bruce?”

“Sorry,” he says, picking up the next gun in the compartment, tearing his eyes away from her. He shouldn’t stare like that – she can probably feel it, as clear to her sharpened senses as if his hand, not his gaze, had rested on her bare back or the curve of her neck…

 _Don’t think about touching her_ , Bruce thinks, distantly aware of the gun slipping out of his hands.

“Bruce?” Natasha asks again, sounding worried – she turns to check on him, and he can see her hands, so steady on the controls. She’s so strong. He’s not. He knew it might be like this when he took his patch off, and he doesn’t regret it: they both got out safely, and that’s what counts. But the rush of violence has faded for him, too, and—

He sinks down to the bench, puts his head in his hands, and tries not to moan. Her scent is so strong, weaving around him in the enclosed space, stoking the fire in his blood. He’s hard, he’s wet, and the only thing other than _her_ touch that he can even think about is touching _himself_. But he can’t, not in front of her – it would be a cruel provocation, unfair, maybe even outright coercion. She’s made it very clear that she doesn’t want to fuck him, and he is doing his damnedest to respect that.

A third time, he hears, “Bruce?” When he looks up, Natasha is leaning over him, concern creasing her brow – he sees her reaching out a hand to touch his face, and before he can react, her fingers make contact. It’s like a lightning strike.

He slides off of the bench to kneel at her feet; her hand is suddenly tangled in his hair, pulling his head back roughly. Her other hand comes up to grip his jaw, her thumb pressing down on his bottom lip.

Then, as suddenly as it began, Natasha stumbles back, wrapping her arms around her body. She strides back up to the pilot’s chair and starts doing something with the console, flipping switches intently, eyes focused on the screens. Without looking up, she asks, “Are there restraints in any of those compartments? Rope, even.”

When he realizes what she’s saying, Bruce’s brain is jolted back online by a flash of pure adrenaline. Pulling himself back to his feet, he protests, “Natasha—I can’t fly this plane—”

“I’m landing it somewhere isolated. There’s acres of forest all around. You can stay in the plane and figure out a way to contact SHIELD, I’ll restrain myself a safe distance away—”

“I said you can have me, I—”

“ _Would you stop saying that?_ ” she snarls, drawing a sharp breath and slamming the side of her fist into the console. Still staring fixedly at the screen, she says flatly, “You think I’m going to do to you what those men thought they would do to me – use you, like an object, when you’re not in your right mind, and fool myself it’s not rape because your body doesn’t know any better.”

It takes Bruce longer than it should to recognize the bitterness laced through her voice as what it truly is: fear. Bruce shuts his eyes and lets his chin sink toward his chest – of course she’s afraid of him, she’s always been afraid of him. She’d be crazy not—

 _No_ , Bruce thinks, suddenly, eyes open wide again.

 _You think I’m going to do to you what those men thought they would do to me_. That’s not fear of _him_. He holds himself perfectly still, letting the certainty of it ripple through him. She’s not afraid of him; she’s afraid of herself. She’s afraid of becoming the thing she hates. He _knows_ her.

 _You’re like me_ , he thinks, buffeted by the wave of understanding that breaks over him. The tightness in her voice, the tension in her shoulders—they are old friends. He knows this feeling so well, like the body of a lover. It’s his inheritance.

 _We’re both afraid_ , Bruce realizes. On his side, there’s good reason; but Natasha shouldn’t have to feel this way. _He_ ’s made her afraid, every time he’s offered, with his self-sacrificing bullshit, as if it would be such a terrible hardship to share something real and pleasurable with another person. _You can have me_ , he’d said, too much of a coward to admit the stupid, simple truth: _I want you, but I’m afraid. I want you, but I don’t deserve it._

Bruce points out, “The first time I said that to you, I still had my patch on. And the second time, and the third time.” It’s not all of what he needs to say, not yet, but it’s the truth, and it’s important.

Still not looking at him, she says, “You think you owe me, you think it’s your fault I ended up in this situation – you think because I got you out, you have to get on your knees for me—”

“I think you’re _beautiful_ ,” Bruce says, and Natasha stops. He drops his eyes to the ground and keeps them there. He doesn’t want to see the expression on her face. “Sorry. I know you must get tired of men telling you that. But you can’t read my mind—not that I know of, anyway.” He chances a sliver of a smile, eyes darting up to her face and then back down. “And you don’t know—if I didn’t want you, _me_ , not my Omega, and you asked me to cool your heat—asked to _use_ me, like you said—I wouldn’t do it.”

“Yes, you would.”

“No, I—okay, I would,” Bruce admits, because hey, he owns his self-esteem issues. “But this isn’t that. You’re not asking. You wouldn’t ask. I—I admire that. It’s actually… incredibly hot. But I’m offering.” No, that’s more of the same shit. “I mean, I’m not offering, I’m— _I’m_ asking.” Bruce takes a deep breath. This shouldn’t be so fucking hard. “I said you could have me, but what I meant was… I want you to. I want you. If that’s what you want, too.”

He waits, and after a moment, he risks a look up at Natasha. She’s facing him directly, now, and her eyes are fixed on his face. She looks—surprised, Bruce thinks. Wary, but without the bitter self-directed fear he saw in her before. He meets her eyes and forces himself not to say another word – she’s afraid of pushing him, but he doesn’t want to push her, either.

Unmoving, she says, “Not compelled by the heat. Yours or mine.”

He still can’t read her incredibly well, but Bruce knows a request for reassurance when he hears one. “I’m still capable of stringing together complete sentences.” _Barely_. “And I am one hundred percent confident that you could land this plane and handcuff yourself to some tree and ride this heat out; it sounds like you’ve done it before. But… you want something I can give you. And I want to. And I want it, too.” It’s not any easier to say the second time.

“Want, not just ‘willing,’” Natasha asks, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“Yes,” Bruce replies, ignoring the little voice in his head screaming, _it doesn’t matter what you want, it only matters what you deserve; and what you deserve is nothing._

“Want, not need,” she continues, stepping closer, close enough to breathe each other’s breath.

Bruce nods. She raises an eyebrow.

“Your pupils are enormous, your face is flushed, you’re breathing like a racehorse, and you’ve been hard for the last half hour.”

“Marks of sincerity,” Bruce says with a flicker of a smile – it earns him an amused quirk of Natasha’s lips.

“Are you wet for me?” she murmurs, not waiting for him to answer before reaching out and skating her fingertips down his spine, under the flimsy scrub pants to his opening, which is slick and hot. She dips the tip of one finger just inside, and Bruce shudders, squeezing his eyes shut.

“You are,” she whispers, voice impossibly low, and he opens his eyes again just in time to see her lick the taste of him off her finger with a considering expression. He tries not to buck against her, not to drop to his knees and beg; he keeps his eyes fixed on hers.

“But not enough yet.” She places two fingers against Bruce’s parted lips. “Suck.”

“I don’t need—”

She shakes her head, and pushes her fingers inside, past his lips, slowly enough that he could have backed away or turned his head. “You told me it’s been years for you,” she says, as he closes his mouth around her fingers and starts to suck, stroking them with his tongue. “I don’t want to hurt you, Bruce. I just want to bite you, scratch you, bruise you, hold you down, spread you open and fuck you.”

Bruce’s knees buckle, and she pulls her fingers out of his mouth so she can hold him up—which she _can_ , even though he’s probably half again her weight, _God_ , she’s strong.

“Yes,” he says, just in case there was any doubt, and she laughs as she lets him fall into the pilot’s chair and chases his mouth into a kiss.   She tastes like blood, and that indescribable melting-amber of her heat.

When she breaks the kiss, she pulls in a deep breath and growls, “Good,” reaching up to pull his head back and expose his throat to her teeth. Just as she begins to bite down, something on the console beeps, loud and obnoxious.

“Shit.” She climbs off of him, shaking her head as if to clear it. “I need to land the plane.” When Bruce doesn’t move, she adds, “And you’re very distracting, so give me some space.”

“Right, sorry.” Bruce clambers out of the chair and makes for the very back of the plane, his body protesting. He leans against the back wall, resting his forehead against the cool metal. It helps a little, but not much. Behind him, he can hear Natasha flipping switches, and then he hears the thrum of the engines drop in pitch as they slow.

 _Fucking plane – it has autopilot, but not auto-landing?_ Bruce thinks, pressing his hands to the metal beside his head, pressing harder and harder as the temptation to touch himself grows stronger.

Eventually, he feels the bump as the plane settles onto the ground, and he turns back around to see Natasha rising from the pilot’s chair.

He starts to walk toward her, but she doesn’t move – she just watches him approach, face blank, and Bruce falters under her sharp gaze. He rubs his palms over the fabric of his pants nervously. When she’d touched him, when she’d whispered in his ear and he’d been immersed in the scent of her heat, it had been easy to forget that whatever she felt when she touched him was about hormones and proximity, not about him. But the heat that he’d seen in her eyes before is muted now, and Bruce wonders if he’d read her wrong somehow; feels stupid thinking about how he’d begged her, how he’d almost fallen at her feet…

“Where are we?” he asks, moving his feet again, but heading toward the console, not looking at Natasha.

“Manitoba. Privately-owned forest land, extremely isolated.”

As Bruce peers at the map on the console absently, he notices the automatic systems are still engaged, and he remembers thinking _– it has autopilot, but not auto-landing?_

He turns to face her, trying to understand. “It didn’t matter how ‘distracting’ I was, did it? Why did you…?”

Natasha’s eyes are shuttered, her hands close by her sides. “You’re allowed to change your mind.”

Bruce takes a deep breath. “I’m not afraid that you’re going to hurt me.”

“It wasn’t that long ago you were afraid that _you_ were going to hurt _me_ ,” Natasha says. Something about the carriage of her body is wary, suspicious. “Has that changed?”

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut, feeling her words like a blow. For a moment, incredibly, he almost forgot, but he can’t. He _can’t_. He shouldn’t make her handcuff herself to a tree out in the middle of god knows where; he should leave to restrain himself, and she can stay. Even if the Other Guy doesn’t see her as a threat anymore, promised not to hurt her, he’s a danger to her. He still doesn’t deserve—

Natasha’s voice cuts into his thoughts. “If I asked you for this, you wouldn’t deny me. And if what you really feared was hurting me, that wouldn’t be true.” Some of the confidence fades from her voice as she admits, “I don’t know what else is going on in your head, but I know that.” He feels a breath of air across his cheek, as if a hand reached for his face and then pulled away. “But I can’t ask.” Bruce opens his eyes to meet Natasha’s steady gaze, waiting for her to continue—but she doesn’t. She just waits.

 _You_ don’t _know that_ , Bruce thinks for a moment, frustrated, _you don’t know_ me _,_ but the hell of it, the thing that stops him in his tracks, is that she _does_ know him; that in some ways, she’s had his number almost from the minute they met, long before he realized it himself. She knows what it is to build a labyrinth of rules and tricks and habits of thought, not to keep other people from coming in ( _that’s just a bonus_ , Bruce thinks), but to keep your own potential for violence from spilling out. This is her trying not to hurt him, and however topsy-turvy that idea sounds to him, he understands the impulse, and he respects it.

She can’t ask—it would be so much fucking easier on him if she would, though. Because she’s right, of course: if she asked him to cool her heat, he’d be on his knees before his next breath, fear sublimated to the roaring want. It wouldn’t be selfish, then. It wouldn’t matter how little he deserved. It would be good—however much Bruce might tell himself it wouldn’t matter, he knows it would be good—but whatever pleasure he got from it would be beside the point: just a byproduct of putting his body at the service of her need. Even now, if he wanted, he could sink to her feet and tell her, “You’re right,” and think in the quiet of his own head, instead, _it’s fine. Whatever she wants_. Nothing would have to change. Maybe she would know, but... maybe not. God knows he has a lot of practice.

It would be easy, probably. And then he could carry on just as he always has: enjoy it and hate his own enjoyment, run away after to marinate in his guilt. He could turn even this good, pleasurable thing he’s being offered into a punishment; turn gold into lead and sit back with sick satisfaction thinking, _I knew it. I knew that’s all I was worth_.

Bruce looks at Natasha—waiting in stillness, strong enough to bear his choice, whatever it is. He thinks about kissing her; about opening himself to take her in; giving her a place to sink all that strength. He thinks about how much he wants that, and about how satisfying it could be to make someone else feel good without making himself feel like shit in the process. He knew how to do that, once upon a time. And he thinks that maybe, just for right now, it doesn’t matter what he deserves. Maybe he still has the capacity to do something other than destroy.

He comes closer, close enough that all he can breathe is her scent, and she still won’t kiss him, won’t touch him. Her eyes give him nothing.

“Please,” he says, simply.

Natasha reaches up toward his face, excruciatingly slowly, and draws him into a feather-light kiss, as hot and fleeting as flames flickering across his skin.

“Anything I shouldn’t do?” she murmurs against his mouth.

“Don’t draw blood.” It’s insane, stupidly risky of him to try this at all, but he can’t just throw away all caution.

“All right.” Another flame-kiss. Bruce feels light-headed with desperation. She curls her hand into the waistband of his scrub pants. “Then you’d better get rid of these before you soak them through or I tear them off.”

Bruce groans, and starts fumbling with the drawstring of the pants, but it’s hard to focus with Natasha’s hands clenched in his hair and his bottom lip caught between her teeth. Her body is pressed so perfectly close to his, so much skin on his skin, and she kisses like an invasion. When he breaks the kiss to shove the pants to the ground and kick them off, she snarls and pushes him backward, slamming him against the wall of the plane. Pulling his head back to expose the line of his throat, she tells him softly, “I’m going to mark every inch of your skin. When I’m done with you, every part of you will wear my scent, and bear my bruises, and show my marks.”

Every heartbeat sounds louder in his ears; every time his ribs contract he breathes out sense and reason and breathes in Natasha’s scent, amber and smoke and tangerine and blood. He can hear himself whimpering and doesn’t give a damn – he’ll be begging before long, and that won’t shame him, either. He’s allowed to be mindless need and an emptiness to fill, and it’s so fucking good.

One hand still clenched in his hair, Natasha reaches down with her other hand to palm his cock, and his hips buck off of the wall at her touch. It feels like he’s been hard forever. He’d been so good and not touched himself at all, not tempted her that way, and it’s all the sweeter for having been so long in coming.

Having one hunger fed makes the other sharper. His hips tilt up, offering or begging without words; the hand she’d wrapped around his cock slips downward, then further down, and when her fingers brush across his opening again, it rips a cry from his throat.

Natasha pulls back and sweeps her eyes up and down across his body – Bruce doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but he frankly can’t give a shit anymore. He just wants it, wants it so fucking bad he looses one of his hands from where they’ve both been locked on his thighs and starts to reach between his own legs. Out of nowhere, Natasha’s leg whips out and cuts his feet out from under him, dropping him to his knees with one clean blow. Bruce winces as his knees hit the deck – he’s not twenty anymore, and the pain breaks him free of the all-consuming lust for a second.

“Sorry,” Natasha murmurs, joining him on the floor, pressing her half-clothed body against his naked one again. Her hands start mapping his back, his sides, with broad and possessive strokes. Nipping at his ear, she tells him, “You can touch me, you know.”

So he does. He moves his hands over ribs and spine, muscle and sinew, without grace, forethought, or anything but hunger and awe. Her skin is silk interrupted by countless scars, mysterious and beautiful as constellations. He’d love to lose himself in it, rub his face against the curve of her waist and trace his fingers across the elegant parabola of the scar on her left shoulder blade, but the need is just too strong. He can’t want anything else. He can’t be anything else.

“Please,” he begs her, sliding down against the wall and drawing his knees up. “I can’t—I need it, I need you inside me – please, anything…”

Natasha makes a sound like the wind’s been knocked out of her. She hauls him back up to his knees, then manhandles him until he’s braced face-first against the wall. “Listening to your inventory of the plane, there’s nothing here I’d trust as a toy.” She’s murmuring straight into his ear, and he can still hardly hear her over the pounding of his own blood. “I’ll just have to fuck you with my hands. I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

“Please, _please_ ,” Bruce groans. The slippery sound of her licking her own fingers, getting ready to open him up, makes him whimper. He’s always liked it this way – the few times he and Betty had shared their heats, she’d tried the toys, and they had their uses, but nothing beat the intimacy of feeling her fingers inside of him, body against body, imperfect and alive and nothing but _her_.

When Natasha’s first finger slides past his entrance, gliding in so smooth and slick, Bruce can’t breathe for a minute. Years and years he told himself he couldn’t have this, and now to be immersed in it through all his senses – the stars exploding under his closed eyelids, the wet and dirty sound of her finger fucking in and out, the smell of sex and of her, the feel of his entrance stretching to let her in – is overwhelming.

“All right?” Natasha whispers in his ear, stopping and holding perfectly still.

“It’s—yes. I just…”

Bruce has no idea how she knows what he needs from the few pathetic syllables he just said, but she must. She crowds in closer to him, pinning him more tightly to the wall, wraps a strong hand around his hip, and digs her teeth into the muscle of his shoulder. It grounds him until he doesn’t feel like he’s about to float away or explode anymore.

“Good,” he manages, and she takes it as the permission it was meant to be. Her hand starts moving again, opening him up, and then there’s another finger, even better, even closer. She doesn’t waste time scissoring or twisting her fingers – he doesn’t need it, and it won’t fill the need anyway. She just strokes in and out, whispering filthy, possessive nothings into his skin between bites. When her fingers catch his prostate, he groans and tries to buck back against her, but her hand on his hip is firm and strong, so strong.

“Are you close?” she asks. Bruce is past words, past anything but moaning and whimpering into the wall, which is an answer in itself. “Yes,” she rasps – maybe answering for him, maybe lost in it herself. Her thrusts become faster, harder, and it’s almost enough, so fucking close. Finally, when he’s so desperate he could scream, she bites down on the nape of his neck, _hard_ , and shoves in a third finger. Bruce comes apart, shuddering around her fingers and crying out.

He comes back to himself gradually, coaxed back by the steadfast warmth of Natasha’s body still guarding his back, and the line of sucking bites she’s painting behind his ear.

When she pulls out her fingers, he whines.

“Sorry,” she murmurs into his neck. “That’s the good thing about toys – you can leave them in.” She turns him around, pauses to share a deep, unhurried kiss, then helps him lower himself onto his side. His eyes drift closed, but he can hear her footsteps as she walks away.

“Where are you going?” Bruce asks, through the haze of satisfaction.

“Blanket.”

“Mm.” He forces his eyes open, and sees Natasha searching through the overhead compartment, one knee on the bench, the other foot trailing on the floor.

Absently Bruce crawls over to her, mind still pleasantly vacant. He buries his face in the cloth covering her thigh, breathing in her scent, and stays there, feeling heavy and warm and surrounded by the smell of her while his brain comes back online.

The thump of the blanket hitting the floor shakes him out of it – when he looks up, he sees Natasha watching him. She looks hungry, not sated and boneless like he does, and Bruce’s own appetite flares in response. He licks his lips, just to see what she’ll do, and she rewards him with a smile – not her bared-teeth wolf-smile, but a slow, pleased cat-smile.

Her hand comes to curve around the back of his head, and she pulls him closer until his face is pressed between her legs. Her scent is strongest here, hitting him like a narcotic.

She asks, “This what you had in mind?”

Bruce could say _yes_ , but instead he nods, stroking his face against the seam of her borrowed pants until she groans.

“Let me get these out of the way.” She pushes him back long enough to unbutton and unzip the fly of her pants and shove them down around her knees. He doesn’t know what happened to the underwear she’d been wearing in the cave, but she’s bare now. He can feel his dick twitch and his mouth water.

“What do you like?” he asks, nuzzling his way along her inner thigh.

“I’d like to get off,” she says, raising an eyebrow, and Bruce grins.

“Can do.”

Bruce’s self-esteem is somewhere a couple miles below sea level, but this, at least, he knows he’s good at. Half his work is done for him – she’s already aroused, blood-flushed and blood-hot, and plush against his lips when he starts exploring. He keeps his hands moving on her thighs, stroking small circles with his thumbs as he licks all around her clit. Bruce keeps it light for now, little teasing flicks of his tongue. He’s just trying to figure out what she likes – and when he gets it right, he doesn’t have to wonder. Her right hand is still clenched in his hair, and when he tries to leave the right side of her clit for the left, she yanks him back with a moaned protest. When he tries a harder stroke in the same spot, pressing with the flat of his tongue, her nails rake across his shoulders, leaving bright streaks of just enough pain to make him burn hotter.

It’s been so long since he dared to have a heat that he’d forgotten about this part – how he can come like a freight train and still be hard five minutes later, for as long as the heat lasts, again and again, never sated for long. He ignores his own body and keeps learning Natasha’s. When he drops his head to lick into her entrance, it doesn’t seem to do much for her, but when he tugs gently at her inner labia with his teeth, her spine bows inward and she clutches at his head, swearing. Bruce backs off for a moment to let her recover. He steals a quick glance at her face and almost can’t breathe at what he sees there: abandon, pure naked desire, with no hint of the glass-smooth control he still half-expected. She’s allowing him to give her this, meeting him in the center of the firestorm, as naked as he is for all that she’s still in her clothes.

Bruce burns the picture into his memory and ducks back down to go to work. He dips his thumbs into her wetness, then smoothes it along her inner labia, setting up a steady stroke up and down. With his tongue, he builds a different rhythm: slow swirls around her clit, quick dancing flicks against the hard little shaft of it at the base, and broad, insistent, hard strokes with the flat of his tongue against that spot on the right that makes her buck against his mouth. His orgasm is already starting to wear off, but this feeds the need, too, in its own way, as the twitching of her hips gets faster and faster. When he moves his hands out of the way, her thighs close around his head, and that’s even better. He can’t hear anything but the pounding of his own heart reflected back at him and the wet, slippery sounds of flesh on flesh. Her nails are clawing up his back, and the thrusting of her hips makes it hard for him to breathe; his face is soaking and he almost thinks he could come from this alone. It’s perfect, _she’s_ perfect. When he can feel the muscles of her thighs tighten almost unbearably, he forgets the rhythm and just laps at the base of her clit again and again and again until she shivers apart around him, shoving her hips up so hard against his face that he coughs and sputters, and catches himself smiling.

He barely has time to think about whether he could coax her into another orgasm before getting fucked again – as soon as Natasha lets him pull back enough to catch a breath, she’s grabbing him and dragging him up into her lap. For a moment, she just looks at him, eyes hazy and lips curved up just slightly in the smallest smile. With his legs splayed around her hips and her fingertips digging into his ass, it’s not a question anymore: as much as he’d like to be a gentleman, he needs it too fucking badly to think about anything else.

“I need…” he tries to get out, but she cuts him off.

“I know. In a minute.”

A minute seems too goddamn long until she stretches up to catch his bottom lip between her teeth. She swipes her tongue across it, collecting her own juices, and grins as she pulls back.

She murmurs, “You taste like me. Just like you should.” She lifts one hand to spread more of her wetness from the plane of his cheek down to his jaw and over onto his neck. “Yes.” She kisses him deeply, chasing her own taste, fucking his mouth until a whine starts in the back of his throat. “I can taste myself all over you,” she tells him, with a low, intense voice like she’s telling him a secret. “I’m going to enjoy it for a minute. Then I’ll let you fuck yourself down on my fingers while you beg me for more.”

Bruce swallows. For some reason, he can’t seem to get his throat to work properly.

Against his lips, she says, “Sound like a plan?” and Bruce still can’t really get his voice to produce words, so he kisses her instead. He ruts against her stomach while she smears her own taste over any part of him that she can reach and licks out the inside of his mouth, purring when she catches some new hint of herself within. The friction on his cock is good, _so_ good, but it’s no replacement – Bruce reaches behind himself and rubs his fingers against his hole, still a little open from before and so wet now that he can feel his slick dripping slowly down the inside of his thighs. At some point he realizes that his fingers were covered in traces of her fluids, and the doctor part of him should probably be horrified, but that part is somewhere down the bottom of a very deep well, and he trusts Natasha not to have started this if it could have hurt either of them in that way. The Other Guy was right: he trusts her now.

He feels a hand clamp around his wrist, and shakes himself back to awareness of something other than need. Natasha is looking at him with narrowed eyes. “I told you I’d fuck you when I was done.”

If she wanted a coherent answer, she shouldn’t have held his wrist – he’s been trying not to beg her to do that for almost twelve hours and now that he’s got it, he can’t do anything but groan and go limp in her grasp. His head sinks forward to rest in the crook of her neck. He can feel the humming of her vocal cords as she says, “Poor thing. I shouldn’t have made you wait, I think.”

“Please,” he whispers. “Please fuck me, please do it right now – I’m sorry I didn’t wait, don’t make me wait anymore, I need it—”

“Shhh.” Natasha drops a soothing kiss on his temple. “I won’t. You already got me started – that’s not a bad thing. Here.” She doesn’t loosen her grip on his wrist, the grip that makes him feel quiet and still; instead, she brings her other hand around to his hole and mimics the motion he made before, petting his slick entrance, rubbing without slipping inside. It feels amazing – trapped between her arms and breathing in her scent, face still buried in her skin, her hands stroking him and her body warm against his cock – but it’s still not enough.

“I need you inside,” he begs, and she replies softly, “I know. We’ll do it together.”

 _Together?_ Bruce doesn’t understand until she tightens her hand around his wrist briefly and guides it down so his fingers are tucked in beside hers in his crease. _Oh_ , Bruce thinks as his body shivers with a flash like a fever.

“Two to start,” she says, and presses them both inside, past the tight ring of muscle at his entrance, to the hot softness within. He’s still slightly loose from the first time she fucked him, and their paired fingers slide in so easy, making a wet sound as they bottom out. He loves the feeling of her finger inside of him, claiming him, but it’s even better with his own finger alongside – not just the pure physical sensation of being stretched around something thicker, but the dirty feeling of being used by her like a toy for his own fucking. His thighs are trembling with the effort of keeping still, and he’s mouthing at her neck mindlessly just to keep himself from screaming. It feels like nothing more than the slightest brush across his prostate would make him come.

“I t-told you…” Natasha’s voice is ragged, and the knowledge that she’s as wrecked by this as he is brings Bruce even closer to the brink. “I told you that I’d—that I’d l-let you fuck yourself on my hands…”

“Until I begged for more,” Bruce echoes.

“Well, what are you—” she pulls in a shaky breath “—waiting for?”

“I won’t last long,” he admits, ashamed and trying to pull himself together enough to be good for her.

“Good.” She nips at his ear, hard, and breathes, “I want to see you come all over yourself.”

Bruce throws his head back and groans. Taking a deep breath, he braces his free hand against the wall and starts to move. It’s even better than he thought it would be, feeling her finger and his own slide in and out with the movement of his hips, her hand around his wrist bracing his own hand, letting him borrow her strength. He can feel his own slick running down his knuckle and pooling in his palm. It’s filthy and fantastic, and even better when he looks down and sees her watching their fingers disappear into his hole, rapt and hot-eyed. He imagines how they must look – Natasha still in her bra with her pants around her thighs, playing him with her hands while he bounces naked in her lap, panting and flushed.

“Please,” he whimpers, not even sure what he’s asking for, feeling his balls tightening but not able to get there yet without something, something more.

“You need—faster?” Natasha says, breathless, but Bruce shakes his head – not faster, no, he’s setting the pace and it’s just right.

“I need—give me another finger, _please_ ,” he begs. “Give—give me more, more open, I want to—I need it thicker, I need _you_ …”

Frowning, Natasha asks, with difficulty, “Are you sure? You’re still so tight, so tight for just two, do—do you—”

“I do, I need it,” he says, desperate, “I’m not too tight, I promise, I promise it won’t hurt me, you gave me three before—”

“Your fingers are thicker than mine—”

“ _Yes_ ,” Bruce says, trying to make her see, “I need that, I need even more – I don’t feel tight, not to me, I feel so loose and—and _empty_ , still. Please, please fill me up, please—”

Without a word, she slips another of her fingers inside of him – when he starts to babble grateful nonsense, she shuts him up with a kiss and crooks her fingers, pressing on his prostate. “I _said_ ,” she murmurs, “I want to see you come, come for me…”

Bruce shoves himself down on their fingers once more, twice more, and collapses on her lap, shuddering through his orgasm and grinding down on their fingers as hard as he can until it stops.

Before he can catch his breath, Natasha bares her teeth at him and shoves him down on the bench, hard enough that his head makes a sharp _crack_ when it hits the surface. The sudden pain in the back of his head makes something stir, and Bruce starts to panic – he tries to take deep breaths, tries to detach, but it’s not working, _please, no, don’t let me do this. Don’t let me kill another person who tr_ —

He feels something that pushes him back to his body for a second – his eyes fly open and he sees Natasha’s face. Her eyes are dark but clear, concern breaking through the haze of the heat: concern, but no fear. The thing moving inside his head subsides at the sight of her, receding into silence, and Bruce takes one deep, shaky breath and then another.

“Are you all right?” she asks. Bruce realizes that she doesn’t know what happened. Her hands are locked around his wrists, pinning him to the bench as she kneels over him, and that’s when he realizes something else. _I did it all wrong_ , Bruce thinks. _It’s her hands on my wrists that pulled me back, and the Other Guy was—when he saw her, when I opened my eyes instead of trying to shut everything out, that’s how he knew I was okay_. _Because it was her._

“Bruce, are you all right?” Natasha repeats, looking more worried this time – Bruce takes a deep breath.

“Fine,” he says, and thinks that that may actually be true, for once. “My brain just got rattled. You pack a punch.” He tries a smile, which Natasha returns, still looking concerned.

“You knew that.”

“I did.”

Rubbing her thumbs absently against his wrists, Natasha asks, “Should I not…”

“No!” Bruce shakes his head. “Please. I mean, not that hard, but—I like it.”

“Good. So do I.”

Bruce keeps breathing, waiting for the sudden spike of adrenaline to fade. She waits for him, stretched out over his body like a predator, still wearing her bra and fatigue pants, which strikes Bruce as kind of a shame, now that his head is clear enough to think about it.

Sounding amused, Natasha says, “You look like there’s something you want.”

“Could you—could you possibly take off—”

“Mm, of course.”

Natasha lets go of one of his arms so that she can unhook her bra one-handed. As she slips the strap down the other arm and kicks off the pants still crumpled around her knees, Bruce can’t help but let his newly free hand wander. He reaches up to caress the underside of her breast, and marvels at how pale and soft the skin there is, compared to his sun-weathered hand.

Natasha captures his wrist again and wrestles it back down against the bench as easily as swatting a fly, giving him a wicked smile. “I don’t think so,” she says, voice low and velvety.

“I don’t get to play?” Bruce teases. His heart is still pounding with relief, and he can feel his cock getting hard again already.

Smile broadening, she tells him, “You can play all you want. As long as you use your mouth.”

As soon as she says the word, Bruce’s mind fills up with images and his mouth waters. Her nipples are a deep, rich rose color, and already tight and peaked, and he knows just how good they would feel between his lips. He knows how sweet it would be to tease each nipple with just the point of his tongue before warming them up in his mouth again, maybe with a gentle scrape of his teeth.

He gets his chance when Natasha leans forward, resting more of her weight on his wrists, until she’s close enough that Bruce can arch up and kiss the valley between her breasts. There’s a scar here, too, and Bruce licks it gently, almost apologetically. He doesn’t like to think of how she might have gotten it, and doesn’t want to remind her, either, so he doesn’t dwell on the scar. Instead, he does exactly what he imagined: he licks his way over to Natasha’s right nipple, then flicks it with the point of his tongue again and again until she moans. He loves the feel of it, loves the breathy little sound she makes every time he licks her, and he whimpers in disappointment when she pulls back again.

Natasha crawls down his body, leaving bites behind on his jaw and his neck, until she plants one knee right between his legs and lowers her hips. He can feel her pussy wet and hot against his leg.

“ _Yes_ ,” she moans, closing her eyes. Bruce makes a broken sound when she starts grinding down on his thigh. Her head is thrown back, her hands are clenched tight on his wrists, and the sight and feel of her is so mind-bendingly hot that it takes a long minute for Bruce to realize what she needs.

“Let me…” he starts, planting his right foot on the bench and lifting his thigh so that she can have a better angle and grind against it more easily. The new angle lets her lean harder on her hands, putting more pressure on his wrists, and Bruce’s own eyes fall shut for a moment. They don’t stay that way—can’t. Bruce can’t take his eyes off of Natasha: the fluid movement of her hips, the sleek strength in her arms, the look on her face like the pleasure might be almost too much. Her teeth are pressing down into her red, red bottom lip, but small moans still escape – urgent and hungry. Every so often, her thigh will brush against the base of his cock, and Bruce can’t help bucking up, breaking her rhythm. When he does, she cries out, and her eyes open for a moment, catching his gaze; but other than that, it almost seems that she’s forgotten he’s there. Her eyes are shut tight, like she’s bracing herself for the pleasure, and every part of her seems focused on chasing the friction against her clit. She’s given him what he needed, made him beg, made him come, fucked him as hard as he wanted. Now it’s her turn, her desire, and Bruce just drinks in the sight of her, the sound of her moans, and _wants_. He holds himself steady for her as she rides it out, coming with barely a sound – just an indrawn breath and a look on her face like she’d fallen over the edge of something and found a soft place to land.

Gradually, Natasha sinks down until she’s sprawled on top of him, her cheek pressed to his chest. She releases his hands, and he strokes her hair back from her face. He’s waiting on her to make the call – he’s hard, and he wants it, but not with the same urgency as before, not yet.

“We should sleep,” she says – her consonants are a little fuzzy, and it’s inexplicably disarming. Bruce thinks she’s probably right, but then his left hand finds the curve of her

breast, and any thought of a reply wanders off into the wilderness. He keeps his touch light, just barely skimming his fingertips over her silken skin, down to the swell where it meets his own—

“I said,” Natasha repeats, swatting his hand away, “we should _sleep_ , Bruce.”

Sheepishly, Bruce says, “Good idea,” and tries to keep his hands to himself.

Natasha rolls to her feet with characteristic grace. When she bends down to pick up the blanket, Bruce takes the opportunity to look his fill – he’s never seen her naked body before, not entirely, and it’s a work of art. There’s muscle everywhere, shifting over her back like currents in a stream as she moves. Every sharp line – her flexing bicep, the point of her jaw – is matched with a smooth curve, from the sinuous line of her hip to the fullness of her lower lip. Bruce’s hands itch to trace those lines and curves, and to cup her perfect breasts until he knows their weight in his palms by heart.

When Natasha curls up on the blanket and reaches out a hand for him, Bruce joins her. With her arm wrapped around his waist and her mouth pressed against the nape of his neck, it’s hard not to get distracted by thoughts of her hand on his cock or her teeth on his skin, but for a moment, at least, his exhaustion is stronger than the heat.

“Wake me if you need it,” she murmurs, and Bruce nods. If he weren’t so dead on his feet, there’s no way he could sleep with her right there, with her arm around him and skin so warm and smooth. But his body does maintain some hierarchy of needs, and he drops into a pool of sleep like a rock’s been tied around his ankle.

*

He wakes up when his face is shoved into the blanket, Natasha gritting out broken pieces of a sentence. “Sorry, I’m sorry…” Her body is draped over his, lithe and unbelievably tense. “I wanted to—wanted to let you sleep but—” Her right hand is clamped tight on his hip, and her left thumb is pressed hard into the base of his spine, hard enough to bruise. “Can I,” she gasps into his ear, “can I—?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Bruce groans, pulling his knees up under him and letting his head hang forward. When her fingers slide inside him, he can feel her moan of relief shiver through him, all the way to the soles of his feet. The fog of sleep is gone as if he never felt it. His entire mind is focused on Natasha’s hands taking him apart, and Natasha’s voice, fevered. “I need it, I need— _oh_ , oh, so good.”

Sixty seconds ago, Bruce was asleep, and now he’s not sure if he’s ever been more turned on in his life. He truly could not have imagined how fucking hot it would get him to hear Natasha tell _him_ that she needs it, to know that she woke him up because she needed to fuck him so badly that even her Alpha’s impulse to protect and provide for him couldn’t hold up under the heat. He tries pushing himself back against her fingers, and she meets him thrust for thrust, fast and brutal and unapologetic. When she whispers, “Touch yourself,” he loses track of everything else. He only knows the thrust backward onto her hand and the thrust forward into his own, again and again and again, until he comes, gasping. She doesn’t stop, not even when he collapses into a boneless pile under her. All she does is let go of his hip; when he hears the quality of her moans change, becoming breathy and high, he knows where her other hand must be. Her forehead is pressed into the nape of his neck, and her thighs bracket his hips, and he feels as if the two of them are so close, somehow, that she’ll bite down on his skin and taste every year of his history. That he’ll taste the salt of his own sweat on her lips and know a secret she’s never told anyone else. When she gasps out her orgasm, he shakes with her.

She collapses on top of him, practically purring with satiation. “Am I crushing you?” she mumbles after a while.

“No.” Bruce likes her weight pressing him down, likes feeling the expansion and contraction of her ribs as she breathes. “S’good.”

After too short a time, Natasha sighs and levers herself off his back. “We should try to eat something.”

Bruce doesn’t really want to move, but the heat has abated temporarily, and a better chance may not come for a while. He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling of the plane, trying to summon the motivation to get up. An energy bar appears in his field of vision. It stays there, dangling in his face until he groans, reaches for it, and sits up.

His body does want the calories, and he manages to wolf it down, dry and stale as it is. Natasha does the same, chewing carefully and affecting calm.

“How are you feeling?” she asks him. “Anything too much?”

“I can take a lot more,” Bruce answers honestly, not meaning anything by it, but Natasha’s eyes flare with hunger, and she crawls over to him.

“Can you?” she murmurs, pinning him with her gaze. Bruce nods, mouth suddenly dry, and she gives him her wolf-grin.

“Finish that—” She nods at the energy bar, which Bruce shoves down his throat as fast as he can without choking. “—and then show me how much you can take.”

Natasha keeps him on his belly for hours, covering his back with an aching trail of bites and playing idly with his cock while she works him open. When three fingers isn’t enough, she lets Bruce eat her out again and then beg her for four before she gives it to him. When four isn’t enough to fill the need anymore, she blankets him with her body, pressing him down as she gives him her hand more slowly than he would have believed was possible. The feel of it, the deep satiation that makes him feel possessed, and broken, and finally filled, stops up his mouth, and he shakes silently as she waits for his body to adjust, and then fucks him just as slowly as before.

Bruce comes once around her hand, and then, a bare minute later, a second time, when Natasha whispers furiously in his ear, “You’re mine, _mine_ , and you were made to be under me, made to spread your legs for me, and bruise under my mouth so that everyone knows you belong to _me_.”

He whimpers when she carefully pulls her hand out, but she soothes him with her teeth on his throat, and her other hand around his cock. He comes like that—Natasha’s clever fingers playing with the stretched rim of his hole while her other hand twists around the head of his cock. Then, exhausted, he lets Natasha herd him back onto the center of the blanket and wrap her arm around him for another nap.

He’s barely coherent the next time she wakes him up—sleep-deprived, hungry, and fucked-out—and Natasha seems almost as heat-hazy as he does, but she still gathers him into her lap and fucks him on his own fingers again while he writhes against her and buries his face in her hair. He thanks her with an unsteady voice after he comes, his hands and thighs a mess of his own slick and semen, and she shuts him up with a kiss before asking him if he wants to go again.

“Yes,” he replies, but his body betrays him – his thigh muscles are shaking too badly to lift him anymore.

Natasha ignores his apologies just as she’d ignored his thanks. She shoves him flat onto the blanket and pauses above him, pressing him into the floor with a splayed hand on his chest.

“Sterile?” she asks, and Bruce starts to blurt something about this environment being the farthest thing from sterile he can imagine before he realizes she meant _him_ , and saying, “Yes.” He’s glad _she_ thought to ask – he’s so stupid with satiation and exhaustion that it wouldn’t even have occurred to him.

“Good,” she says, and slides down onto his cock, starting a dirty grind interspersed with long, lush, drugging kisses while she rides him.

The mechanics aren’t quite what his body is looking for, but there’s no doubt that, regardless of who’s penetrating who, _she_ ’s fucking _him_ , and his Omega detects that and is satisfied with it. He returns her kisses, losing himself in them and in her heat-smell, warm and strong as ever. His hands stroke along her skin, anywhere he can reach. When her rhythm crests, and she reaches a hand between her own legs, he joins her there, and lets her rub against his thumb until she comes, biting his lip as it takes her. She keeps riding him, sharpening her teeth on his collarbone and bruising his hips with her hands, and he follows her over the edge before too long.

Bruce starts to feel himself drift off again, and tries to apologize, but Natasha just snorts and shoves him over onto his side. She curls around him for a third time and splays her hand across his belly.

“Sleep, Bruce,” she orders, and Bruce obeys, mumbling, “You, too.”

*

When Bruce wakes up this time, his mind is clear. As a test, he runs himself through some equations he presented at the conference and—yes, he is capable of thinking about something other than sex now for more than thirty seconds. Natasha’s arm is still wrapped possessively around him, and he can feel her breath soft against the back of his neck.

 _It’s over, then_ , he thinks. It’s insane that he’s feeling anything other than relief, but it was insane of him to do this in the first place. He _is_ at least relieved that he won’t be putting Natasha in that kind of danger anymore. He knows he should be waking her up, putting one of those spare uniforms on. Instead, he catalogs his body’s aches – the burn in his thighs, the well-fucked soreness in his ass, the bright points of pain scattered across his neck and torso from bites and scratches. She meant it when she told him she was no finishing-school alpha. At the time, he loved it, and now he hates himself for basking in the marks she left on him – they don’t mean anything, and the little corner of him that’s started thinking like they do should be taken outside and shot. She wanted him because he was dangerous and because he was there, and Bruce can honestly say that he’s never had a girl like him for being dangerous before, but he still knows that women don’t stay with the dangerous guy who takes them out for a thrill. Bruce should know – he used to be the safe, sweet guy a girl would pick when the guy with the motorcycle turned out to be too damaged to keep.

His back is so warm where her body is pressed against him, too muscled to be called soft. The rest of him is cold now that the heat’s worn off. He has to wake her up. Real life is calling. It’s time. It _is_ , come on, Bruce—

“Bruce?” he hears from over his shoulder, and he can’t decide whether he’s glad to have the decision taken out of his hands or not.

But then she kisses him – she props herself up on one elbow and leans in to drop a kiss just under his jaw, sweet and hot, making a drowsy little humming sound. “Bruce,” she says again, not a question this time. She sounds… pleased. Like she’s glad he’s there. He doesn’t know what to do with that.

“Natasha,” he says warily, rolling onto his back to look up at her – their heats were synced, so if his wore off, hers should have ended, too. He should be able to tell just by looking.

Before anything else, she’s beautiful, of course, and Bruce takes a second just to drink in the sight of her; he normally doesn’t let himself notice how lovely she is, or let himself linger on it, but she’s so close to him, skin to skin, and her arm is still the sweetest weight across his chest, and he just… wants to. He notes that her cheeks are pale again, rather than flushed, and her pupils are back to their normal size. “Clear?” he asks, just to be sure, and she nods.

“Clear. You, too,” she adds – not a question. But she kissed him, and he doesn’t know why.

She doesn’t seem inclined to explain it. Instead, she sits further up and runs her eyes up and down his body, her gaze snagging somewhere around his throat for some reason. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

Bruce levers himself up to match her sitting position, wincing at the way his lower back twinges. “Sore,” he admits.

Natasha’s gaze shutters, and she draws back until they’re no longer touching. “I apologize,” she says – she’s meeting his eyes, but it doesn’t look like she wants to be. “I didn’t want to hurt you—”

“I loved it,” Bruce blurts out, and that at least stops the incredibly unnecessary and guilt-inducing apology. He tries to explain. “I still—It’s a good kind of sore. Really.”

“Understood.” The corner of Natasha’s mouth quirks. “I have a little of that going on myself.”

Bruce takes in the way her hands are carefully braced, spread-fingered on the floor of the plane, and winces. “Hand cramps, huh.”

“And stubble burn,” she acknowledges, casually flashing a glimpse of her inner thigh and gesturing toward her face.

“Ouch,” Bruce offers, shaking his head. It’s kind of amazing the stuff your brain just ignores in the grip of the heat. He’s starting to feel it in his knees, too. Even after Natasha grabbed the blanket for them, it was still a lot of kneeling for his not-so-young joints.

Natasha, on the other hand, seems as limber as a twenty-year-old when she climbs to her feet. She hops up onto one of the benches, naked and completely un-self-conscious about it. “Would you check the communication console and see if there’s anything new?”

Bruce pushes himself upright and tries not to groan. He ambles over to the cockpit, and before he can even start to search for the communication console, his eyes catch his reflection in the glass of the HUD.

“Holy shit,” he breathes.

Even in the faint, distorted picture the sort-of-windshield provides, he can see that there’s a necklace—hell, more like a collar—of bite marks all around his neck and down over his collarbone. The rest of his chest is speckled with other bites, and there are handprint-bruises on his hips, too. The tops of his shoulders are scored with scratches. When he twists to check his back, it’s the same—plus a meticulous line of bruises bitten down his spine, from the crease of his ass up to the crest of his shoulders, as far as he can see with his neck twisted around. The back of his neck is so dark with bruises, he can’t see a single unmarked patch of skin. There are gorgeous bruise-cuffs around his wrists, too.

Bruce can hardly breathe. He knew she’d marked him, but not like this – not like… He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to describe the way the sight of the marks pulls on something in his gut, the same way it made him feel when she kissed him. He’d thought, when they came out of the heat, it would be simple – awkward, probably, but everything back to normal, two people who don’t know each other all that well but still have to work together. He doesn’t know what this is. Probably he’s imagining it.

Natasha asks, “Anything on the console?”

Bruce starts, and peers down at the screen of the communications segment of the larger console. “Yes, there’s—it says distress signal received. Wait, does that mean—”

Before Bruce has time to become afraid, Natasha says, “Good. The team should be on their way.”

So that’s _their_ distress signal, sent to the team; Bruce had been worried that the craft had sent a signal back to whoever had captured them. Still trying to wrap his head around the fact that they had the capacity to send a distress signal at all, Bruce asks, “When did you—”

“Just before the last time I woke you up. I could tell the heat was a few hours from passing.”

“You could have sent the distress signal all along, and you chose to send it _then_?”

“If the team had showed up before the heat passed, things could have become… unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant like incredibly awkward?” Bruce asks, pretty sure _that_ is inevitable.

Unblinking, Natasha replies, “Unpleasant like I might have killed Steve.”

“Oh.” Bruce pauses. “But why St—”

Steve, the only other alpha on the team after Thor took Loki back to Asgard.

“Right,” he mumbles. It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, looking at the Jackson Pollack of scratches and bites on his back, that Natasha’s Alpha is _extremely_ possessive. It also occurs to him that how this whole thing went down – their heats syncing, and then the two of them fighting off threatening alphas and betas (even though _Bruce_ wasn’t the intended victim) – looks a lot like what a heat challenge or a mate claiming would have been like in the bad old days. They’re supposed to be past that now, civilized… but some instincts are buried in the bones.

“They’ll be here any minute. We should wash up and put some clothes on,” she says, handing him a bottle of water.

“Good point.”

Natasha searches around for the pants and bra she dropped and puts them on, businesslike, before throwing the extra uniform from the overhead compartment to Bruce.

Bruce pulls the pants on, but offers the uniform shirt back to Natasha. “We’ve only got the one shirt. You should wear it. I pretty much always end up buck-naked after a battle anyway, so it’s not like they haven’t seen it all already.”

Natasha doesn’t move to take it. She breathes in and out through her nose, then says, “I want to take it, but that probably means I shouldn’t.”

Bruce tries to puzzle that out, then realizes she’s looking at her marks on his shoulders, and understands.

“Not all instincts are bad instincts,” he says, shrugging. “Anyway, you’re injured and I’m not. And like I said, they’ve seen it before.” He reads the hesitation on her face and adds, “Do you really want Tony to see you half—”

“You’ve made your point,” she says, grabbing the shirt and pulling it on.

“I can look at that gash,” Bruce offers, nodding his head at the cut on her stomach. Natasha nods back, and Bruce starts toward the first aid kit, but there’s a crash from outside the plane, and Natasha tenses and motions him toward the cockpit.

“Get down and stay back.” She does something with the console that starts to lower the back door of the plane, then grabs two of the guns and crouches behind one of the benches.

A voice says, “Yo! Jolly Green and Not-so-Jolly Red! The cavalry is here!”

Natasha turns to Bruce and rolls her eyes. “We’re rescued, apparently.”

The back door lowers fully onto the ground to form a ramp, and Bruce follows Natasha out of the plane onto the grass, where Tony, Clint, Steve, and a Quinjet are waiting.

There’s a moment of awkward silence when the team gets a good look at them—at Bruce, especially—and then Steve turns bright red, and Tony pops up his faceplate and whistles.

“ _Damn_ ,” Tony says with feeling, stretching the word out to three or four syllables.

Natasha says, to no one in particular. “My heat came on while we were captured. Once we escaped, Bruce helped me. I’m sure we can all be adults about this.”

That’s so far from an accurate description—either of what happened, or of how the others (mostly Tony) are likely to respond—but Bruce keeps his mouth shut. He’s sure she has her reasons.

Tony, miracle of miracles, _does_ manage to keep his mouth shut as the team shepherds them into the Quinjet. In fact, he’s almost ostentatiously silent and respectful, but not so much that Bruce thinks it’s a joke.

“That was a good thing for you to do – to help her,” Tony says later, avoiding eye contact. “It’s… I—that was good.” And Bruce remembers Tony’s file – a full month held captive in that cave in Afghanistan, and even if he wasn’t on suppressors so that going off of them would bring the heat on, that was still a fifty-percent chance that…

“It was—we looked out for each other,” is all Bruce says.

Up in the cockpit of the Quinjet, Natasha and Clint are having what looks like a conversation carried out entirely by moving their eyebrows. Bruce wonders if she’s marked Clint up like this, the times he’s cooled her heat, and then wants to stab himself in the trachea for thinking about it. He can’t be stupid about this.

*

After they return to SHIELD HQ, Bruce gets a clean bill of health and an impressed thumbs-up from an omega nurse before being trapped in an endless set of debriefings where he’s forced to admit that he remembers practically nothing about the people who kidnapped him. The second day of debriefings is no more informative, and actually almost worse – it’s conducted by agents who’ve just returned from inspecting the location where he and Natasha were held, and most of them can’t meet his eyes. By the time he’s on his fourteenth hour of pointless interviews, Bruce has given in to his ignoble and immature impulse to bang on the table every half hour or so just to watch the agents across from him jump and go flying back from the table. The third time he pulls that trick, it’s on a new set of agents, and the one on the right pulls a gun on him as he’s scrambling away.

A voice over the intercom says, “That’s enough,” and the door of the conference room opens outward to reveal Natasha standing in the doorway. Without looking at Bruce, she informs the two agents on the other side of the room, “Dr. Banner’s debriefing is suspended until further notice.”

“Under whose authority?” asks the agent who _didn’t_ point a gun at Bruce.

Natasha replies, “Director Fury’s and mine.” She turns her attention to the other agent, who’s still got his sidearm clenched in his hand. “Agent Krulewicz, you are suspended for three months without pay for assaulting a SHIELD asset without cause, and suspended another three months for being stupid enough to point a firearm at someone impervious to bullets.”

Krulewicz flushes an angry red and wheels on Bruce, spitting, “You get on your back for an alpha bitch once and she comes running whenever you get scared, huh?”

Bruce smiles. “I wasn’t scared. But you should be.” Natasha is standing slightly behind him, saying nothing.

“I’m not fucking scared of you. Not either one of you,” Krulewicz says, apparently forgetting that he’d been frightened enough of Bruce two minutes ago to pull his sidearm.

“Chris, I think we should go,” the other agent says, pulling on Krulewicz’s elbow—she, at least, seems to have some sense.

“You called my friend and teammate a bitch,” Bruce says mildly. “I don’t know about you, but that kind of thing tends to make me pretty angry. And if you’ve been up to the facility where they tried to keep us, you’ve seen what happens when I get angry.” And Bruce leans forward and lets go of his control just the slightest bit – just enough so they can see it in his face. They’d forgotten, in their wounded pride, who he is. For a minute, he’d been just some pussy who lowered himself to spread his legs for an alpha bitch. He can see when they remember.

After they’ve stepped on each other’s shoes trying to get through the narrow doorway, he feels Natasha’s hand brush across his shoulder.

“Nicely done,” is all she says.

“An omega who’s as dangerous as she is,” he reminds her, liking the way it makes the corner of her mouth twitch as she beckons him to follow her through the door.

“You’re not _quite_ as dangerous as I am,” she corrects him, eyebrow lifted, and he grins.

“Of course not. My apologies.”

“Come on. I’ll take you back to your lab.”

Being alone in the Quinjet with Natasha brings back some vivid memories, and Bruce spends most of the trip staring at his feet and trying not to think anything at all.

When they touch down at Stark Tower, she escorts him to his lab without saying a word. The silence is oddly comfortable.

Back on familiar ground, Bruce digs through the detritus on his various lab tables, and comes up with a clear box. “Here,” he says, pulling a sheet of patches out of the box and handing it to her. “These are like mine – undetectable. So that… never has to happen again.”

“Thank you.” She peels a patch off of the sheet and applies it behind her ear without hesitation – a pretty staggering gesture of trust, in Bruce’s opinion. “I’m leaving for a new mission tomorrow – I’m expecting that it will take about three months. How frequently will I need to replace the patch?”

“You mean, will you need to replace it before you come back?”

“Yes.”

Bruce pauses—this is an incredibly invasive question, but she did ask for his professional opinion. “What was the interval of your heats before you started suppressants – was it a four-week cycle? Or longer—”

Meeting his gaze steadily, Natasha says, “I don’t remember a time when my heats weren’t chemically controlled.”

“Oh.” Bruce swallows. He probably should have guessed that. “Well, a four-week cycle is average, and the patch is designed to last through up to four cycles, so no, you shouldn’t have to replace it before you return, but you should replace it when you get back.”

“Do I need to replace it immediately when I return?”

“You do if you don’t want your heat to come on,” Bruce says, smiling.

“Yes.” Natasha looks him straight in the eye. “Do I need to replace it immediately when I return?”

It takes Bruce an embarrassingly long time to understand what she’s getting at—once he does, he’s not really in any better shape. He looks back at her helplessly, trying to glean some clue from her expression, but it’s impossible. Finally, he confesses, “I don’t understand—” He cuts himself off when he sees the look she’s giving him. “No, I understand what you’re _saying_ ,” he says. “I just… I don’t understand _why_.”

Bruce realizes too late that it sounds like he’s fishing for compliments, and blushes, but Natasha doesn’t seem to take it that way. Without looking away, she says, “I liked it. With you. It felt right.”

“That’s enough?”

“It can be.” She sounds almost determined. Like she’s trying to prove something.

Bruce thinks about that. Unconsciously, he reaches up to touch the bite-marks on his throat, then freezes when he sees her gaze sharpen, an unfamiliar, satisfied look flashing across her face. A hint of a smile touches the corner of her mouth before it’s gone. After a moment, he laughs a little and smiles back. “I guess maybe it can.”

A brief silence falls; Bruce is the one to break it.

“Will it be dangerous?”

“You and me?” A wider, darker smile blooms on her face. “Of course.”

“I know that.” Bruce almost laughs. “I meant the mission.” Upon reflection, he’s pretty sure she knew that.

Natasha shrugs. “Same answer.”

Bruce thinks about the kiss she gave him when they woke up yesterday. He didn’t understand it then, and he’s not sure he understands it now, but he thinks, based on this conversation, that she might let him take the liberty of returning it.

Giving her plenty of time to pull back, he reaches out to lift her hand from where it rests on the lab bench and brings it to his lips. The heat-scent is gone from her skin, but he can still feel the strength in her fingers and the calluses on her knuckles. She could knock him down where he stands—but instead, she held him together when he might have fallen apart. The least he can do is scrape up the courage to meet her eyes when he says, “I liked it with you, too.” She smiles, and he coughs awkwardly, letting her have her hand back. “So, ah, try to come back? Please?”

Her smile widens, and she brushes her fingers down the bruised line of his throat. “Try to be here when I do,” she says, before she walks away.


End file.
